Javier Zabala: A Nonconformist in Spanish Children’s Literature Illustration

Javier Zabala, born in León in 1962, is one of the most acclaimed illustrators in children’s literature in Spain. After graduating from the School of Graphic Design and Illustration in Oviedo, he moved to Madrid in 1989 to begin working for Spanish publishers and magazines. The Swiss publisher Bohem Press contributed to his early international reputation with the publication of Madrid für Kinder [Madrid for Kids] (2002) and Barcelona für Kinder [Barcelona for Kids] (2003). To date, Zabala has published over seventy books and has been translated into fifteen different languages. He has received numerous awards such as an Honourable Mention in the Bologna Ragazzi Award fiction category (2005) for his picture-book Pictogramas en la historia de Don Quijote de La Mancha [A picture history of Don Quixote de la Mancha] and also in the Poetry category (2008) for Santiago [Saint James]; The White Ravens Award (2007) promoted by the Internationale Jugendbibliotek in Munich for Las Cosas Perdidas [The Lost Things]; and the first prize in the category of Best Children’s Book Banco del Libro de Venezuela (2009) for Sin los Ojos [Without Eyes]. In Spain he received the National Illustration Award in 2005 for Pictogramas en la historia de Don Quijote de la Mancha, and the Iberia Junceda Award (2010) for Hamlet. Zabala also delivers courses and workshops in libraries and art schools in Europe and Latin America, and has taught summer courses in illustration at the University of Macerata, as well as at the Ostia Library in Rome.

An Introduction to Zabala’s World

Zabala’s artwork is in continuous evolution. Each of his books is somewhat different from the previous one, revealing an artist who does not conform, but who enjoys introducing and experimenting with new techniques. The style that has won him recognition evolved between the approximate years of 2002 and 2007. During this period he produced Pictogramas en la historia de Don Quijote de la Mancha (2004), El Soldadito Salomón [The Soldier Solomon] (2004), Santiago (2007), Sin los Ojos (2004) and Las cosas perdidas (2006), which received national and international acclaim. In his earlier years, Zabala worked primarily with graphics, color, watercolor and a touch of naïve art to convey a bright, lively and cartoon-like world. His style is reminiscent of Raoul Dufy’s French Riviera watercolors, especially in the depiction of the personal visual interpretation that Zabala makes of Madrid and Barcelona in his illustrated tourist guides for children: Madrid für Kinder and Barcelona für Kinder. From 2008 onwards, and perhaps because most of the books that he now illustrates are addressed to adults or young adults, his illustrations have evolved into a more sober, minimalist style, generally darker in shade and with black and white playing a dominant role. However, although we can clearly observe an evolution, a number of visual features appear throughout all of his work. These features allow us to identify any one of his illustrations with his name. What follows is a description of those recurrent elements, and the transformation they have undergone in the two basic stages his career is visibly divided into.

The First Stage (2002–2007)

Broadly speaking, in these first years Zabala worked with pencil and ink drawing and applied watercolor, gouache and acrylics for color. To a lesser extent, he also introduced the collage technique by including bits of newspaper cuttings and photographs, but always in a highly integrated way. An illustrative example includes the neuron structure prints taken from medical books and inserted as pictures hanging in the office of Ramón y Cajal (Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, 1906) in Pictogramas de Santiago Ramón y Cajal [A picture history of Santiago Ramón y Cajal] (2007). The use of collage is also particulary interesting in Pictogramas de la historia de Don Quijote de La Mancha when Zabala uses as the main body of the windmill on the front cover a section of...