KARLIEN de VILLIERS, ZA

Karlien De Villiers was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1975. She studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Stellenbosch University from 1994 - 1997, and worked as a commercial designer in an advertising agency in Cape Town after graduating.

She soon realized the advertising world did not suit her passion for painting, drawing and traditional image-making techniques, so she resigned and traveled through the US and Europe for two years doing odd jobs, visiting museums and bookstores and drawing in her sketchbooks.

Upon returning to South Africa in 2000, she started her Master’s degree in Information Design at Pretoria University. De Villiers first published short comic stories in Bitterkomix, satirical Afrikaans comic magazine, but during her postgraduate studies she started working on a graphic novel that deals with the death of her mother set against the socio-political backdrop of Apartheid South Africa during the 1970s-80s, entitled Meine Mutter war eine schöne Frau (‘My mother was a beautiful woman’). The novel was published in a German translation in Switzerland (Arrache Coeur), and emerged as the second-best seller at the Fumetto International Comics Festival in Luzern in 2006.

The book has since been translated into French (a et La), Spanish (Glenat) and Italian (Comma22) – but has to date not been published in South Africa.