Open call: International Illustration Festival LUSTR 2022

Published May 22, 2023

This year’s largest Prague’s illustration and comics festival will focus on expressive drawing.

9th year, September 22-28, 2022

Kampus Hybernská, Prague

www.lustrfestival.cz

This year’s largest Prague’s illustration and comics festival will focus on expressive drawing. There will be works by classic Czech illustrators such as Josef Váchal, Jiří Šalamoun or Květa Pacovská, but also works by contemporary “wild card” illustrators of younger generations – both from the Czech Republic and abroad. Furthermore, the festival is once again curating a non-thematic exhibition section “Young Talent Showcase,” to which first-time LUSTR participants can apply until the end of May. Interested artists can respond to the open call on the LUSTR festival’s website until 31.5.2022.

This year’s first exhibition will be called “Wild Boars – Expressive Tendencies in Illustration.” The curators will introduce the audience to the distinctive Czech tradition of expressive illustration, which can be traced back to the works of the self-made painter and graphic artist Josef Váchal. Following later were the works of Jiří Šalamoun and Květa Pacovská, who had the strongest influence of their generation on the Czech illustration scene. The exhibition will also present unjustly neglected names such as Jindřich Kovařík, Miloslav Jágr, Václav Kabát and Alois Mikulka. Many creators continue to follow their wildness, fascination with children’s drawings, and interest in the unfettered line, anatomy, and perspective. The current generation of artists will be represented by North Bohemian illustrator Martin Raudenský, German visual artist Paul Waak and Austrian illustrator and graphic artist, Sarah Maria Schmidt. The exhibition will also include a selection of works by contemporary Japanese illustrators, curated in the Czech Republic by the author Saki Matsumoto.

The festival will carry on the tradition of celebrating fresh work in the field in the Young Talent Showcase. This freestyle collection will bring, for the third year, the best work to come out of the studios of young illustrators and comic book creators in the last year. Through this selection, the festival aims to share the latest from the illustration scene and to introduce new names. The show will again be divided into two separate sections: comics and illustrations. The showcase is selected by an expert jury from applications that can be submitted on the festival website until the end of May. The three essential conditions for submitting an application are: the exhibition project must not be a purely commercial work, the registered author has not exhibited at the festival so far and it should be a work created during the last year.

A program consisting of lectures, workshops, presentations, live comic book readings, and discussions with festival guests will accompany the festival this year. You can look forward to personal meetings with illustrators, comic book artists, publishers, screenwriters … both in practical workshops for children and adults, and for a number of lectures and presentations.

The authors of this year’s visual style are illustrator Jakub Bachorík, winner of last year’s LUSTR Audience Award, and graphic artist Alexandra Šliková.