Illustration 72

In Illustration 72 we have an international flavour. Jim O’Brien immerses us in the magical worlds of the Japanese designer, Satoshi Kitamura, whose bright, colourful and uplifting imagery for children is both humorous and surprising. Equally fantastic is the work of the highly acclaimed Spanish illustrator, Ana Juan. Ana explains her unsettling world in a detailed interview, and we’ll learn about how she visualized two of the weirdest Victorian texts – Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.  We also consider some illustrators who are relatively unknown in the United Kingdom. Wilfried Onzea introduces the work of the twentieth century German artist, Siegfried Kaden, who illustrated Thomas Mann, and Brian McAvera writes about the Swiss social realist, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. We conclude these foreign adventures with a return home to the prosaic streets of late Victorian London and its hidden monsters; Simon Cooke explains how illustrators approached Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. All of this, plus the usual blend of news, reviews and details of exhibitions.