Meet the illustrator Iris Samartzi from Greece

“...If you want to be an illustrator, first you have to be a director, a scenographer, a graphic designer,a photographer, an interior designer, a costume designer...and last but not least a painter.I could add more occupations, such as historian, explorer, engineer, physicist and more.Of course, I am none of those things but, to me, illustration is constant research in oh-so-many fields...” Iris Samartzi HCAA Dossier

Iris Samartzi is a children’s book illustrator and an art teacher. She has illustrated over 80 books.  Her work has received many awards, including the 2016 International Compostela Prize for Picture Books, the Greek State Picture Book Award (2012, 2016) and the Greek IBBY Award (2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017). In 2020, she was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. When she is not illustrating books, she runs art workshops for children. She lives and works in Athens, Greece. 

You can read more about Iris - her books, collage illustrations and awards - in her Hans Christian Andersen dossier. I highly recommend you take a look. 

I loved read this in her dossier about book design and attention to detail:

Another distinct trait of Samartzi’s art as an illustrator is her interest in all the peripheral components of a book. She is the one who, apart from meticulously curating the book title’s design and the book’s boards (covers), also tends to book elements which are less visible such as the initial and final end sheets. Those comprise the flyleaves, which remain loose and close to the book block, and the pastedown, which is attached to each book board. Quite often, Samartzi ensures that the endsheets are a visual summary of each story with the beginning end sheets flagging the story’s starting point and the final end sheets marking the story’s outcome.

Here are two illustrations by Iris - one from Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring Summer and one from On Ellie's wavy sea. Sadly neither of these scrumptious looking books are available in English. 

Her five nominated books are “Καλοκαίρι, φθινόπωρο, χειμώνας, άνοιξη, καλοκαίρι...” (Summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer…, published by Patakis), “Léon Millequestions” (published in Belgium by Langue au chat) “Una última carta” (One last letter, published by Kalandraka), “Όταν ο ήλιος πάει για ύπνο” (When the sun goes to sleep, published by Martis Books) and “Tata?” (published by Ikaros).

Here is the website for Iris. And here is a Pinterest collection of her work.

Read more about this book here (use Google Translate).

The cover I show here is this text in Spanish.

This book is presented in a slip case which you unwrap like a present! 

And the end papers are fabulous - this is another book by Iris that I would adore to see. 

Take a look at more work by Iris on her Facebook page. Here is a video (4 minutes in English) where Iris talks about her collage art. You can see inside Tata (see cover below) and also her accordion book- When the sun goes to sleeep -  which is a book I would love to see. The reverse side of the stretched out pages form a quilt.

You are sure to recognise some of these titles illustrated by Iris Sarmatzi:

Here are three more of her books submitted to the Hans Christian Andersen Jury who begin their deliberations on Monday 14th February.