- Illustrator Nominee:Argentina
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I work from a pictorial vision, always researching new ways to perform my job as an illustrator, trying to find a different language for each book I work on. This search is the most challenging part for me – finding the visual concept and the general structure for the book.
– Isol
Isol's quest for a visual language with which to express the concepts and thoughts in each book which she has illustrated is evident in her work. While her style is distinctive, it also adapts to different narrative situations, partly due to the varying media she employs in her efforts to catch the essence of what a book is about. Her use of a strong line, although at times it is deliberately uncertain and wavering, characterises much of her output. But with this she blends a variety of techniques and media, including oil pastels in her first book, Vida de perros, collage in El cuento de Auggie Wren and the appearance of engraving in other titles, and frequently too she utilises the possibilities of digital colouring for special effects.
Isol was born in 1972 in Buenos Aires, her current home. She studied art at the University of Buenos Aires and had ambitions to become a teacher of fine arts, but this idea was abandoned when she began to achieve success with her books.
Vida de perros was published in 1998. She submitted it to a competition organised by the publisher FCE (Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico), and, although she didn't win the competition, it was decided that the book should be published.
She writes the text for much of her own work, but has also illustrated books by Paul Auster and Jorge Luján. The influence of the comic book is evident in her work and for five years she contributed visual material to the Clarín newspaper's Sunday magazine.
Isol has been invited to exhibit her work in a number of international exhibitions, including the Biennale of Illustration in Bratislava (BIB), where she won a 2003 Golden Apple Award for Tic Tac. She also exhibited at the British Council's 'Magic Pencil' exhibition in Buenos Aires in 2004, and won the ALIJA (Association for Books for Children and Young People of Argentina) award for Best Integral Book in 2004 for Piñatas.
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Selected bibliography
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