Alessandro Sanna: Illustrator – Italy

The painter overfills the time of the observer’s mind, while the illustrator makes them guess a sequencing, therefore a movement. Painting freezes time, illustration composes it.

A good image is the one that can give dignity to the represented subject and creates its archetype, at the same time. It is difficult to plan it because it is only with dedication, patience and hard work that you can obtain the right sign, the right colour and the right energy.

A. Sanna

alessandro sanna (born in 1975) is a prolific, award-winning Italian author and illustrator who, along with creating his own stories, has worked with authors such as David Grossman, Anne Noisier, Roberto Piumini, Gianni Rodari, Vivian Lamarque, to name a few. With over seventy works, Sanna is widely recognized in his home country and across Europe for illustrating books that cater both to children and adult readers.

Sanna’s works have been displayed in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad—for instance, the exhibition “Il Fiume Lento” was open during October 2015 in Prague. His works have also appeared in many national and international magazines—such as Corriere della Sera, Il Sole24Ore, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. In 2015, Sanna’s collaboration the Italian publisher Einaudo resulted in the publication of an anthology titled L’anima degli animali (The Soul of Animals), which contains a collection of texts by Plutarch, Aristotle, and Porfirius that are accompanied by twelve watercolor illustrations by Sanna.

Fiume Lento (The River, 2013), Sanna’s latest masterpiece, was awarded the Italian Super Premio Andersen 2014 as best book of the year and was also included in the White Ravens 2014 selection. Translated into English, Spanish, German, and Simplified Chinese, The River is a splendid book that pays tribute to the river Po (in Northern Italy) and wordlessly conveys time, movement, and experience through minimalist watercolor imagery.

In 2006, Alessandro Sanna’s book Hai mai visto Mondrian? (Have You Ever Seen Mondrian?) won the Premio Andersen for best art book. Again, in 2009, Sanna was awarded the Premio Andersen, this time as best illustrator of the year; he was also awarded the Premio Rigamonti, a national prize named after the late Paolo Rigamonti promoting innovative young visual artists, that same year.

Sanna currently lives and works in Mantua, Italy. Since 2013 he has been teaching illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna; he is also working for Vanity Fair France.