Anna Desnitskaya. Star

Anna Desnitskaya is a Moscow-based artist, illustrator, and collagist. She is a graduate of the Moscow State University of Printing Arts.

Desnitskaya has illustrated several children's books, including "Two Trams" by Osip Mandelstam, "Aliens Among the Egyptians" by Eduard Shenderovich, "What's What" by Vadim Frolov, and "Look, I'm Growing Up" by Boris Almazov (all published by Samokat), and "The Metro on the Ground and Under the Ground" (published by Peshkom v istorii). Anna has participated in competitions for designer toys and applied arts. She also conducts doll and dollhouse making workshops for adults and children.

Anya Desnitskaya's major and important project, "The History of an Old Apartment," was created in collaboration with Alexandra Litvina. They told the entire history of the 20th century through the eyes of children from a fictional communal apartment on Chistye Prudy.

In 2017, Anya Desnitskaya participated in the International Biennial of Illustration in Bratislava (Bienále ilustrácií Bratislava) and won the Golden Apple Award (GOLDEN APPLE BIB), one of the most important awards for illustrators from around the world.

In anticipation of the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair, "The Story of an Old Apartment" was included in the highly selective and prestigious catalog of the world's 100 best contemporary illustrated books, compiled by the DPICTUS Association of Publishers of Quality Illustrated Books. At the 2021 CIS International Book Art Competition, "The Art of the Book," a first-place diploma was awarded to Anya's book, "Transsib. The Train Departs!", in the "Art of Illustration" category.

INTERVIEW

For Anya and me, the stories in "The Old Apartment" are deeply personal, even though we rarely drew directly on our family histories. We want people to pick up our book and find something to talk about with their children while they're still interested and while their mothers remember and know. "Grandma was little, Grandpa was little, and everything was completely different." Conversations about the past are difficult, but you don't necessarily have to immediately bring up the revolution, the Great Terror, or the war. Of course, there have been and still are topics that parents don't discuss with their children not because they're politically inconvenient, but because they can't talk about them without anger and bias, or even without internal pain; it's difficult and impossible for them.

History lessons

It was important to me that I could include characters from my family and family belongings in the book. I always feel sad about things that pass away. For example, we have an apartment where my grandmother now lives. Our family has lived there since the building was built. And I'm sad that this apartment is no longer the same as it was in my childhood. And I could draw some of the pieces from there that are dear to me, or, for example, people, in the book.

Pravmir.ru

"It's wrong to give a child the task of 'draw an orange squirrel with a white belly in the center of a sheet of paper.' A better approach, in my opinion, would be for children to first look at photographs or paintings of forests and squirrels, or to remember being in the forest in the summer and feeding squirrels, or to read a story about a squirrel. Then let everyone draw their own story about a squirrel and a forest—and some will have a big squirrel with a white belly in the center of the sheet, while others will have a small, gray one in the corner."

Matrona.ru