The Three Musketeers
The Jury for the 8th edition of the Notte di Fiaba illustration competition met on Saturday, April 9, 2022. Following a careful review of all submitted works, the Jury, chaired by Francesca Tancini and joined by Svjetlan Junaković, Eleonora Cumer, Matteo Gubellini, Franco Pivetti, and Chiara Tomasi, announced the winners and awarded special mentions.
Opere premiate
The Jury for the 8th edition of the Notte di Fiaba illustration competition met on Saturday, April 9, 2022. Following a careful review of all submitted works, the Jury, chaired by Francesca Tancini and joined by Svjetlan Junaković, Eleonora Cumer, Matteo Gubellini, Franco Pivetti, and Chiara Tomasi, announced the winners and awarded special mentions.
A mature illustrator capable of original interpretations that combine an almost calligraphic decorative exuberance with excellent directorial and narrative skills. As in the previous edition of the competition, Silvia Gorla once again achieved a masterful balance of solids and voids, vibrant hues and whites, resulting in great visual elegance.
What particularly impressed the jury was Alessia Mannini's personal technique, which combines skillful gestural work, using pencils and charcoal, with a balanced digital treatment that keeps both the intense, warm colors and the strong, instinctive mark vibrant. In some panels, the storyboard is merely a sketch, perhaps due to a creative approach that favors direct execution without an underlying trace and doesn't require a drawing to support the depiction.
The power of her chalcographic filaments, ignited by expressionistic and electric chromatic bursts, had already made an impression in previous editions of the competition. This year, however, Laura Martinovic presented a digital version, less textural, where nervous linear graphics are superimposed, almost like an overprint, onto areas of flat color. As in the past, the storyboard was only sketched and did not allow for imagining the final work's rendition, which might have offered good directorial and narrative solutions.
Premio speciale
Veronica Pia is an illustrator capable of imbuing her works with great dramatic intensity and an almost violent expressiveness, thanks to her energetic use of acrylics, all while maintaining a lively narrative force. Her metaphorical and symbolic references, almost surrealist in nature, elevate the text, projecting it towards new imaginaries and far from trivial outcomes.
Menzioni speciali
Anna Quaranta's graphic and narrative execution was particularly praised by the Jury, as it holds up well in both the storyboard and the final images, featuring original and highly effective creative insights. The skillful use of colors, with variations of greens and grays, is effectively complemented by a calligraphic style that strikes a balance between decorative elements and storytelling.
The jury particularly appreciated Elisa Codutti's skilled hand, as demonstrated with traditional techniques, expertly handled in both the watercolors of the final plates and the pencil work of the storyboard. The latter, varied and dynamic, shows good potential in the construction of perspective space. The ironic and caricatural interpretation is very successful but positions these images towards a younger age group than that suggested by the text.
Her personal style, fresh and impulsive, especially in the storyboard, allows for settings imbued with melancholic grace. Isabella Tiveron has skillfully managed this with a digital technique that perfectly mimics watercolor and ink. The final pieces, perhaps overly polished, lose some of the freshness of the drafts and would benefit from counterpoints of varied intensity.
The jury highly appreciated Marco Vesco's storyboard and black and white treatment – lively, dynamic, varied, with very interesting compositional solutions – especially when compared to the finished works, which had flatter and less personal color schemes. The graphic style, though rich in influences, is very vital and capable of generating effective worlds and remarkable atmospheres, even if perhaps distant from the text's frame of reference.
Scopri le edizioni passate del concorso
ll Notte di Fiaba Illustration Contest nasce nel 2014 su iniziativa di Enzo Bassetti, Presidente onorario di Notte di Fiaba, ed è ideato e progettato da Chiara Tomasi, Direttrice Artistica del Concorso, con il supporto del professor Livio Sossi, tra i più autorevoli studiosi europei di letteratura per l’infanzia e illustrazione.
