Itkin, Anatoly Zinovievich
You probably remember this illustrator from childhood, and he continues to work now. This is one of the oldest artists, Anatoly Zinovievich Itkin.
He was born in Moscow in 1931 into a family of civil servants, spent his childhood in Ostankino barracks, was evacuated during the war, and then his career as an artist from the age of 12 to this day and a huge number of books with his illustrations.
Itkin illustrates mainly adventure literature and Russian classics: Defoe, Verne, Twain, Dumas, a lot of Pushkin. Therefore, he defines his audience as teenagers. He worked in ink, pastel, and pencil drawings, but his favorite medium was watercolor. It is from these dim but light-filled landscapes, relaxed, natural mise-en-scenes, skillfully captured in the moment figures of people that his hand is recognized.
Itkin does not paint from life, and admits that he is not very good at it. All drawings are born in his head and he transfers them to paper, but in order to fill his consciousness with images, all his life he traveled a lot around the country, made sketches, absorbed the atmosphere of the places where he visited, in order to later reproduce what he saw in his works.He considers traveling with a notebook and pencil an integral part of the professional work of a true illustrator.
His illustrations will appeal to most people because they are clear and pleasing to the eye. Itkin himself says that he has never been an innovator, but has always gravitated towards traditionalism. He defines the golden mean in creativity as a balance between absolute innovation and absolute tradition, because if a work is absolutely traditional, it is secondary, and it is no longer creativity; and if it is absolutely avant-garde, it is perceived as chaos and arbitrariness.
It’s amazing that a man who was already a famous artist in the 60s is now no less in demand, publishing houses are inundating him with offers, he collaborates with “Labyrinth”, “Nygma”, “Swallowtail” - and the man is already over 90, can you imagine?!
And here’s another interesting subtlety in the publishing industry: previously the artist was entirely responsible for the visual component of the book, but now the cover has become the domain of the designer/marketer. This is done to increase the number of sales, because the marketer knows which cover will attract the attention of buyers, and the artist. Well, he's an artist, not a salesman. So Anatoly Itkin does not agree with this formulation of the question and still likes to design the book inside and out, because he considers compilations of his drawings on the cover to be in bad taste.
