Alenka Sottler


Alenka Sottler is a Slovene painter and illustrator. She lives and works in Ljubljana as a freelance illustrator and is a member of New York Society of Illustrators. She has illustrated over 50 books for children and adults, for which she received numerous awards and honours including her second nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2014.

Life and career

Alenka Sottler was born in Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. Her father, Gorazd Sotler, was a sculptor, a pupil of the prominent Croatian sculptor Antun Augustinčič and her mother worked for Slovenia's leading newspaper and printing company, Delo. Alenka received her first informal training in drawing and sculpture in her father's studio. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and successfully finished her postgraduate study in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1983. From 1988, she works as freelance painter/ illustrator for the best Slovene and foreign publishers and magazines, including Mladinska knjiga, the largest and leading Slovene publisher. In 2011, she was awarded the title of Assistant Professor of Painting by the University of Ljubljana.
She has illustrated more than 50 books and produced many illustrations for children's magazines. An important part of her output is devoted to fairytales, both modern and classic. Her black-white illustrations for Folk Tales from Around the World signalled her mastery and a number of awards followed. Her work is inventive, visually appealing and drawn with faultless confidence. She is contemporary in style but also well-versed in the history of visual imagery and the imagery of power, meaning and clarity. In recent years she has mainly illustrated poetry and fairytales and made original graphics/engravings for collections of poems by Malcolm de Chazal, and works on paper inspired by literature and poetry.
Today, she lives and works in Ljubljana.

Awards

Selected Illustrated Works

Pesem za liro, written by Bina Štampe Žmavc, 2016Ljubim tvoj medeni srh, written by Mateja Blaznik, 2014Zašto se baka ljuti?, written by Lela B. Njatin, 2014Tujec, written by Albert Camus, 2012Prividi, written by Niko Grafenauer, 2009Cesar in roža, written by Bina Štampe Žmavc, 2009Svetlanine pravljice, written by Svetlana Makarovič, 2008Tri pesnitve, written by Andrej Brvar, 2009Pepelka, 2005Ko pridejo angelčki, written by Dim Zupan, 2004Svetovne pravljice, 2004Mehurčki, written by Oton Župančič, 2004Anastazija Krupnik, written by Lois Lowry, 2002Velik sončen dan: izbrane pesmi za otroke in mladino, written by Neža Maurer, 2000