Quick Facts
Biography
Monika Beisner (born 1942 in Hamburg ) is a German artist and book illustrator.
Life
Monika Beisner studied painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (HBK) and - with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service - at the Slade School of Fine Art, London and at the Berlin University of the Arts. A Fulbright scholarship enabled her to study in New York. Since 1970 she has lived as a freelance artist in London, Ratzeburg and on Gozo (Malta).
Work
Children's literature
Early in her career, Beisner was best known for her children's books, such as The Heavenly Zoo (1979) and Fabulous Beasts (1981), created in collaboration with the American writer Alison Lurie.
Adult works
More recently, she has concentrated on illustrating classic texts such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Ovid's Metamorphoses. The three-volume edition of Dante's Divine Comedy also includes an essay on Beisner by the historian and mythographer Marina Warner. All 100 of her original paintings for the Divine Comedy are in the collection of the Italian Dante collector Livio Ambrogio.
Beisner's illustrations for Ovid's Metamorphoses were published by Pratt Contemporary, as a portfolio of 36 digital prints.
She is currently working on a new collection of works related to Gilgamesh.