That was a long time invitation from our friend Lică Sainciuc (who is a good friend of hers as well) to visit Violeta Zabulică at her studio. It was a sunny Saturday, we all met at the entrance of the studio and did the introductions, heading to her place filled with light, warm sun and lovely symbols that were hidden all over the flat.
Violeta Zabulică-Diordiev is a graphic artist, book illustrator and History of Books teacher at the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in Chișinău. She is also one of the people who caught most of the soviet heyday in publishing and got many awards for her children’s book illustrations.
Violeta shared with us her late drawing series created during the pandemics, which as she confessed, she never had the time to start before the lockdown. Introducing every work and explaining its meaning or its links to art history, we slowly moved to the kitchen, where the hot tea and the sweets made some space for a warm discussion. Violeta was eager to tell us her story so it was a pity not to record it.
There was an introduction into her childhood, mentioning the fact that her parents had always supported her career choice for the Book Design industry even though they were from a totally different field.
Anna Vasina in conversation with Violeta Zabulică:
About Violeta’s artistic formation
I am a very impressionable and grateful person by nature and, for that matter, I remember every teacher that gave me the love for the subject. At school there was Ernest Simakov in the painting class (there was no graphic class at that time) and later, at the University of Arts — the competition for the graphics department was huge, I got lucky to be accepted and have Alexei Colîbneac in the role of the teacher who curated us from start to finish. He is the person that I’m immensely grateful to, he gave me a lot of knowledge and later on, thanks to him, I was invited to teach at that same university, becoming his colleague.
What about the colour palette of your works — when did it form? Was it during your studies?
It’s hard to say exactly when, because an artist continues to form during its whole life, being influenced by its environment, the trips it took and the history of arts in general — which I studied a lot in my childhood and love it till this day. I have a weakness for a lot of personas, from the great masters, and I would like to have a ‘’dialogue’’ with them through my works, reminding people about their greatness.
I know that you have the traditional graphics education, but how did you get into the book design?
There already existed the department of book (graphics) design at our university and we were already studying this field for six years. Once again, I was lucky enough to get some small commissions after university, and I executed them all with great pleasure and lots of dedication. Later on, I had the chance to meet some great people, some of them were authors, and we managed to collaborate on their books for many years to come.
One of my clients was a Priestess from Romania which happened to be the great-granddaughter of Ion Creangă (a Moldavian, later Romanian writer which was a main figure in the 19th century) and with whom we collaborated for a long time and had successfully published 6 books, the 7th one being on its way.
Let’s get back to the books ;) I am here with two people who got the highest mentions in book illustration (meaning Violeta & Lică). How does it feel to design a book that will get the highest mention? Do you know it from the start or do you just work on it, hoping it will get an award?
Again, I get back to the act of creation — in the moment when you work on illustrating a book, you feel somewhat similar to a God but at the same time like a kid that is trying its best to apply all the skills that it has. At the moment I have two IBBY honour mentions, and for the first book — “Winnie-the-Pooh” I was contacted by the editor with the proposal to illustrate the book which had a good Romanian translation. I refused because, at that time, I had my one year old baby. The editor contacted other artists too, but they all refused for various reasons. And when she contacted me again — I accepted, but I mentioned that I’m not sure how I will manage in time, because the book was quite voluminous. And I remember it was a hot summer, so hot that my brush was getting instantly dry as I was trying to paint with it. I was working here, in my studio, and I did a huge amount of illustrations since I was making them in a complex technique on ground colour. Long story short, it was complicated. My husband helped me with suggesting the warm (beige) page colour, not a white one as always. And during three months I managed to finish it, show it to the editor — she liked it, next it went out to print, and when I saw it at the printing house, it was really like seeing my baby, a very special feeling.
Later on, I was busy raising my child and had no time to think of any book competitions, so imagine how speechless I was when, one day, I got a call from the editor, Claudia Balaban. She congratulated me on winning the honour mention and I was beyond happy to hear this news.
The other book project that got the IBBY honour mention was also my idea that I carried out and it was in collaboration with Claudia Partole. First I did the illustrations (I had a series of sketches with kitties in a specific technique) and then she wrote the text based on them — it happens this way too. That’s how the book “Lola cea frumoasă” came to life and I got the second IBBY diploma.
The IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY’s objective of encouraging international understanding through children’s literature.
Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children’s literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.
Source: Ibby.org
There was another book that was among a few projects that I had in mind but could not realise for different reasons. I proposed those project ideas to multiple editors but most of them refused, except for the ARC publishing house that supported me twice with “Scrippius Pip” by Edward Lear, that I proposed to illustrate, and it went out in print in 2 languages — English and Romanian, second translated by Emilian Galaicu-Păun. This book was included in an international catalogue for the best children’s books. I wanted kids to learn through playing with the different names of the creatures that were in the book of poems by Edward Lear. This was my idea and I am thankful to ARC publishing house for helping me fulfilling it.
You mentioned that you worked as the editor in chief at NOI Magazine. Could you tell us more about the work process and the communication between a writer and a book artist?
When I started illustrating books at the end of university, some writers willy-nilly noticed them and gradually, they started to approach me because, I suppose, they liked my work.
A book is always a collective work, each opinion should be taken into account and everything should be coordinated to a common denominator. Therefore, a consensual discussion is always welcomed to match the visions of the artist, the writer and the editor. One can, of course, argue its opinion, but if it goes against the majority, then it will probably not pass.
Earlier you mentioned your students and we know you teach the course of History of Books at AMTFA. How did you end up teaching this course and where did you find didactic materials to support it? Do your students have your mentorship after they graduate from the Academy?
I can proudly declare that this subject was proposed exclusively to me, and I gathered the information from lots of book sources to design this one year course syllabus. This is an author’s course, and, together with my students, we learn about different illustrators, I present to them lots of book designs, we study in depth the universal and the local history of books.
About the mentorship, of course they do. Firstly, we don’t have that many students (the course is not designed for a large flow), so each student is in our sight during their studies and after graduation. We, their teachers, follow their lives and career success and it’s very pleasant when the alumni come to visit us and we have long tea time talks. Most of the time they are thankful for the knowledge they got from us and, thanks to this, they can get hired abroad in this specific domain, some of them even got the Andersen diploma.
Can you tell us about the Moldovan publishing during the soviet times. Is it true that our country was printing books not only for ourselves but for the entire Soviet Union?
It is true and it was actually not planned for Moldova to produce books for the entire Soviet Union, but because we had a big print run and we could fulfill our market, we managed to produce books for other countries of the Union. I remember there were so-called “book tours” through Chișinău and Moldova’s libraries(Luminița) and book shops.
Who’s idea was to integrate these Luminița libraries among the country? Was it something special for our region?
This was a Union program on educating the population. However, there was a big difference between Moldova and the other republics — our country had a high print run and the quality of the books was higher than average. Therefore, people were traveling from faraway just to buy books in Moldova.
Which were the main publishers of the soviet time? Were they involved in propaganda books or were they trying to promote the culture?
First state publisher was Cartea Moldovenească, which later transformed and separated into different divisions. Each publishing house was focused on a specific type of literature. The publisher Literatura Artistică was obviously focused on the classics of universal literature for adults and kids, Lumina was profiled mainly in education literature, same was with publisher Biblioteca Școlarului; Știința stood for science literature and schoolbooks. Every publishing house had its own niche and later on, private publishers like Liceum, ARC, Prut, Cartier appeared.
Literatura Artistică (Artistic Literature) — was a publishing house of Goskomizdat of the Moldavian SSR, founded in 1977 on the basis of children’s and fiction editions of the publishing houses Cartea Moldovenească (Moldavian Book) and Lumina (Light). It published fiction and children’s literature, as well as art publications. In 1979, the publishing house issued 244 titles of books and brochures with a total circulation of 5.1 million copies.
The main priority for the publishing houses was universal and Moldovan classical literature. All the classic poets that you see on the Alley of the Classics (Aleea Clasicilor) in the Public Garden (Grădina Publică Ștefan cel Mare) were published in the soviet time. Concerning the book design aspect, students were wittingly sent to study in Lviv, Moscow or St. Petersburg, so that they can graduate from the polygraphic institutions and come back home in order to practice book design. At that time, the supervisor of all that was Ilie Bogdesco, and under his leadership the industry of books was developing in Moldova.
Leafing through the old books with local book artists, I didn’t find many names of women. Would you say that, at that time, the book design was considered a job not suitable for a woman?
It could probably be so, but I want to mention that, at that time, it was extremely prestigious for a person to design a book, and I can’t find a comparison with something from nowadays. Because it was hard to get into this field, there were many committees coming to review your works and, if something was not convenient to them (most of the time it wasn’t), you had to remake all the work in some specific deadlines. First and foremost, everything was very controlled. Secondly, the difference between a simple artist and a book artist was that the artist could work on her/his piece as long as she/he desires, while the book artist didn’t possess that luxury and freedom, the text being defined and the time very limited.
And if you didn’t fit into this, it was hard for you.
There were Republican, Union and International book competitions that stimulated book designers to grow. The book production was on such a high level that many publishers and book artists were frequently mentioned by those awards.
Here Lică mentioned that the books were produced using two options: 1. for mass market in lower quality and 2. in elite limited editions for competitions. The discussions about the pros and cons of that time spilled over into mentioning the key people that raised the quality level of book illustration at that time, like Leonid Domnin with his unrepeatable style (he emigrated during the 90’s in Israel), or Isai Cârmu who participated in a unique project for Moldova in collaboration with Japan — the Japanese were publishing a series of Moldovan tales, and Isai Cârmu did some magnificent illustrations for them.
It is important to mention that the people who truly worked and created a very decent level of book illustration & design in Moldova, with the beginning of dashing times tended to emigrate or simply vanished.
How did things change after Perestroika?
Everything changed. The prestige of our profession has fallen. The mentality of the people and, quite frankly, everything changed. Why? Because people started to shift their interest in other directions and the priorities changed drastically. At that time, the population was drowning in cheap literature. The cultural level has fallen substantially and with that fall, came down the prestige of the book design. It was incomparable with what it was before, but there still existed writers who wanted to see their books covered in beautiful illustrations, and this fact gave support to the book field in general. Nowadays, with time passing, there are fewer people who want to work in this field, so they choose to shift to graphic design instead.
Violeta remains optimistic about her field and the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts where she teaches the History of Books until today. She feels inspired about her future plans, exhibitions and book projects. Even though the reality doesn’t always seem that colourful, she can still find magic in her life.
It was a pleasure to meet Violeta Zabulică and chat with her, and thanks to Lică Sainciuc for introducing us and letting this wonderful occasion happen.
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