Joost Swarte was awarded de Prix spécial du jury at the BD comic festival in Sollies-Ville, France, for his New York Book. The book provides a complete overview of his illustrations for The New Yorker, over 450 sketches, illustrations, ‘spots’ and covers, together with hitherto unpublished sketches, with commentary by the artist himself.
Joost Swarte (Heemstede, 1947) is one of the best known and most respected comics authors and graphic designers of The Netherlands. Swarte attended the Design Academy Eindhoven for three years, after dropping out to focus on writing and drawing comics. His books have been translated in French, English, German and Spanish.
For the past few years, Swarte’s focus has shifted from comics to illustrations for magazines (among which The New Yorker), posters, stamps and even furniture and objects. He is the co-founder of the biannual Dutch Comics Festival in Haarlem, which were held for the first time in 1992. He also designed the theatre De Toneelschuur in Haarlem, and enters collaborations with musicians such as Fay Lovsky and Arling & Cameron. In 2008, Swarte received an Award of Excellence from the American trade journal Communication Arts for his cover Summer Reading.
