Rui de Oliveira, nominated by Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil – FNLIJ – the Brazilian Section of IBBY – for the Hans Christian Andersen Illustrator Medal (2006) is one of the most original creators among those who are enriching the present editorial production for children and young people in Brazil. Having illustrated a large number of books he says that it is impossible to find stylistic coherence in his work. Nevertheless, his variety of styles, which distinguishes his work and puts him as one of the best Brazilian artists in activity today, is one of his greatest qualities.
His capacity to work with such a variety of graphic solutions is due to his love for literature and his concern in creating, for each text, the most adequate image leaving to the reader the possibility to make use of fantasy and to imagine different forms for his own characters.
Rui de Oliveira was born in Rio de Janeiro, that then was the Brazilian capital. He studied painting at the Modern Art Museum, Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts School at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and illustration at the Hungarian Superior Institute of Industrial Arts in Budapest. He has also studied animated films at the Hungarian Studio Pannoria Film, having become one of the first Brazilian plastic artists with a university degree from abroad, as there is not a book illustration course in the Brazilian universities program.
Back to Rio de Janeiro, in 1975, he was in charge of the art direction of TV Globo, and in 1979 he started to work for the Brazilian Public TV – TV Educativa – where he put into practice different successful programs among them “O sítio do pica-pau amarelo” based in the work of Monteiro Lobato, the most important Brazilian author for children.
In 1983, Rui de Oliveira started to work as free-lancer, creating, with a great success, book covers, logotypes, posters, animated films and children’s book illustrations. He has carried out different individual and collective exhibitions, in the museums of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo as well as abroad. He is professor of Visual Communication, at the Fine Arts School, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) with a Doctorate degree from the University of São Paulo (USP).
The art of Rui de Oliveira puts together the popular experiences from his childhood and youth with the sophisticated experience from abroad. He obtains with this mixture a fascinating artistic miscegenation. According to Millor Fernandes, one of the most important cartoonists in Brazil, the contrast of Rui de Oliveira’s drawings, some simple ones and others a real explosion of colors, follow “the artistic canons that are what they have always been because that is the way it is, and the others who are always changing because that is the way it has to be”. We can find a variety of techniques in his work as well as different materials, languages and tendencies, which characterize the Brazilian illustration production.
Rui de Oliveira has received the most important national and international awards for his work, as of the Second Prize of the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustration in 1980 for the well known book by Michael Ende “Manu, a menina que sabia ouvir” (Momo, 1980), followed by different awards from FNLIJ (Brazilian Section of IBBY) for numerous books and the Jabuti Award from the Brazilian Book Chamber, the most traditional award in Brazil, for the book “The Beauty and the Beast”, a history retold in images, in 1974. His animated film work “Cristo procurado”, from 1990, also received the most important awards.
For his great talent revealed in the illustrations that represent his work, for his academic curriculum, for his professional career always searching for new graphic expressions, Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil is proud to present the work of Rui de Oliveira as nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in the illustrator category, 2006.
Laura Sandroni
Children’s Literature Specialist and Member of the Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury in 2002 and 2004.
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