2018 Winner

The winner of the IX International Award for Illustration Bologna Children's Book Fair - Fundación SM was:

Vendi Vernić, Croatia

THE COMMENTS OF THE JURY

The jury decided to recognize this artist’s conceptual and technical skills and her ability:
 

• to combine many techniques into a coherent whole without it being fragmented;
• to communicate character and atmosphere in a very evocative way with a minimum of detail; 
• to work in a tradition, while not being confined by that tradition, and to do so with a contemporary and very personal voice; 
• to convey the evocative atmosphere of the 19^th-20^th centuries, while giving each image its own atmosphere, all illustrations fitting together into one narrative; 
• to deploy a great wealth of ideas into a single narrative.
   

This young artist has a strong potential to develop a unique voice in contemporary illustration. Her work is poetic, and has charm, humour and gravity.

For these reasons the jury decided to award the 2018 Bologna Children’s Book Fair - Fundación SM International Award for Illustration to Vendi Vernić.

THE BOOK AND THE EXHIBITION 

After winning the award, the Croatian artist has worked on the book ‘La casa de fieras’ and the original illustrations were exhibited during the 2019 Fair, in order to see the stages of the process that lead Vendi Vernic to make her book. 

SKETCHES BEFORE THE BOOK

Here are some of the sketches that Vendi Vernićas made as a preview of the book.