Monika Beisner was born in 1942 in Hamburg, Germany and studied painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig before continuing her education at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and Berlin University of Arts. Based partially in London, Beisner is best known for her illustration work for children’s books and for literary works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
Illustrator Monika Beisner was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1942 and spent much of her youth in Ratzeburg. Beisner first studied painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig before receiving a German Exchange Scholarship which allowed her to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, London between 1966 and 1967. Beisner also studied at the Berlin University of Arts and, between 1968 and 1970, received a Fulbright Scholarship which allowed her to continue her studies in New York.
Since 1970, Beisner has worked as a freelance artist living in London, Ratzeburg, and Gozo, Malta. In her early career, she primarily focused on the illustration of children’s books such as The Heavenly Zoo (1979) and Fabulous Beasts (1981). Beisner’s works have gained international attention since the 1970s and their translation into a wide range of languages, from the original German or English into Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Catalan, and Spanish. In 2019, Beisner’s book entitled Fantastic Toys, first published in German in 1973 and in English in 1975, was selected by New York Review Books to be reprinted as part of the New York Review Children’s Collection.
Beisner subsequently moved onto illustrating famous literary works, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Ovid’s Metamorphosis. She provided one hundred delicate and highly intricate illustrations for the Divine Comedy, translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, which was published in 2007. These works were completed over the course of seven years using egg-tempera, the same medium used in medieval book illustrations. The three-volume edition of the Divine Comedy included an essay about Beisner’s work, written by historian and mythographer Marina Warner, in which she describes the intensive process of creating the illustrations: ‘The one hundred miniatures took her seven years to complete and the achievement is dazzling. The present volume reproduces her work full-size […] with no strokes or drawing visible, but a pure glow of dense colour, applied with brushes so small they consist of a half-dozen sable hairs […] Monika Beisner has been scrupulously loyal to Dante’s text, rendering gesture and position as described in the poem as well as its unsurpassed precision of spatial, geographical and temporal coordinates’ (Warner 2007, pp.228-235). In completing the one hundred miniatures, Beisner became the first person to illustrate all one hundred cantos, and the first woman to illustrate Dante’s work. Today, all one hundred of Beisner’s original paintings are held in the collection of Italian Dante collector, Livio Ambrogio. Currently, Beisner is working on producing a series of illustrations for the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.
Beisner has described the process by which she creates her illustrations as being guided by the principle of making text and image speak together, believing that the pleasure of looking encourages careful reading. Beisner’s works have been met with critical acclaim, with the distinguished Harvard Professor of English, Stephanie Burt citing Beisner as a great influence and inspiration for her own artistic development. Beisner’s works have been featured in exhibitions such as London Artists from Germany, held at the German Embassy, London (1978), Monika Beisner Watercolours for 'Fabulous Beasts' , Piccadilly Gallery (1981) and, more recently, in an exhibition celebrating Dante’s Divine Comedy at the Italian Cultural Centre in London (2021).
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Monika Beisner]
Publications related to [Monika Beisner] in the Ben Uri Library