The MFA Visual Narrative Department, in partnership with the French Embassy, hosts an evening with acclaimed illustrators Antoine Guilloppé and Istvan Banyai on May 13. Faculty member Leonard Marcus will moderate. The program is the final event in a series of conversations with illustrators from Paris and New York presented this spring by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Antoine Guilloppé and Istvan Banyai transform each page of their books into a fully realized scene by playing with light and shadow. Their work carefully considers the medium of the page and pushes its boundaries.

The poetic lines of Antoine Guilloppé’s work play with positive and negative space, and the effect is positively breathtaking. He has written and illustrated many books, including Pleine Lune (Full Moon) and Ma Jungle. He studied illustration at the École Émile Cohl in Lyon and comes to New York this May as artist in residence with the Institut français. Although his books have yet to be translated into English, their expansive imagery invites all readers on a powerful visual journey.

Istvan Banyai brings a retro pop absurdist flair to each page of his books. The acclaimed Hungarian-born creator of Zoom and Re-Zoom, and the illustrator of several other books for children, is also well known for his editorial illustrations, which have been published in the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, among other journals. His perspective, always unexpected, has made him one of the most original and iconoclastic illustrators today and he was named one of the "Top 150 Illustrators” by Taschen Publishers.

The event is moderated by MFA Visual Narrative Department faculty Leonard S. Marcus. Marcus is one of the world’s leading writers about children’s books and the people who create them. His own award-winning books include Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon; Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom; Minders of Make-Believe; The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth; and Show Me a Story! A frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review and the Horn Book magazine, he is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Suggested $10 donation to the scholarship fund of the MFA Visual Narrative Department, to benefit the development of future storytellers, would be appreciated.

Event

Antoine Guilloppé and Istvan Banyai

SVA Theatre