BIOGRAPHY

(b. 1954)

Lisbeth Zwerger was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award for lifetime achievement and contribution to the field of children’s literature. Just sixteen years earlier, she had dropped out of art school, frustrated and disillusioned. None of her teachers had encouraged the art of illustration nor felt it was a worthwhile endeavor.

Around the same time, Zwerger met an English artist, John Rowe, who later became her husband. They lived in Vienna, where Zwerger had grown up. and struggled to support themselves as artists. At one point, Rowe showed Zwerger a book of illustrations by Arthur Rackham. This was a turning point for Zwerger, who found in Rackham’s work both the inspiration and the direction she had lost.

She began to illustrate stories and to sell individual pieces, and eventually her work caught the eye of an Austrian publisher, who gave her a contract for her first book, The Strange Child (1984), written by E. T. A. Hoffman. Zwerger has now illustrated more than fifteen books, all fairy tales, folktales, or classic stories such as O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi (1982), Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant (1984), and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1988).

Although Zwerger s artwork is immediately recognizable, she acknowledges her great debt to Arthur Rackham and other English illustrators. Accustomed to working in black and white, she has used a very limited palette in her earlier work.

During her developmental years, Zwerger concentrated on composition, technique, and accuracy of detail. Her backgrounds were open and vague —almost dreamlike — creating a wonderful dramatic contrast The reader’s eye focuses immediately on her characters and on significant objects in a scene.

Lisbeth Zwerger has said that the most difficult task for her now is choosing material to illustrate; at first she gravitated toward childhood favorites, but later she tired of traditional fairy tale endings, which often seemed sexist or overly moralistic. Her work has continued to be published in Austria; in addition, she is published in more than sixteen other countries, and her work has been exhibited worldwide. Zwerger has been honored several times at the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair, at the Biennial of Illustrators at Bratislava, and by library organizations and literary publications in the United States* She is among the best illustrative artists to have emerged in this century.

Biography courtesy of:

Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.

Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey. (Via NOCLOO)

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