The illustrated imagery of Arianna Papini at the time of the Coronavirus

The fourth author's drawing of The illustrations of firenzemadeintuscany.com

Arianna Papini is a Florentine writer, illustrator, painter and art therapist known and appreciated by "children from 0 to 99 years old".
She has written and illustrated - to date - 150 books for various publishing houses, including Carocci Editore, Ananke, Avvenire, Kalandraka, Donzelli editore and Carthusia Edizioni. Books with which she has won numerous awards, including the Andersen Prize, the Silent Book Contest, the Rodari Prize and the Compostela Prize.

For us of Firenze Made in Tuscany and the theme of resilience she thought of something really special. "I used non-artistic materials - she tells us - but tea, coffee, herbal teas and a little watercolour and graphite, because for me resilience is above all adaptation to times and places. We are closed and we have to use what we have at home, and we always have too many things. He's a character with a mask but she smiles. The world around us is white, aseptic. But his mind flies to what she loves, nature in particular. I think that's me. An unconscious self-portrait to this day."

Born in Florence, the city where she still lives today, Arianna Papini studied at the Liceo Artistico and at the Faculty of Architecture, where she graduated with a thesis on book-game design. She was editorial and artistic director of the Fatatrac publishing house for 25 years. She organized the exhibition and seminars on Alvar Aalto at the Marino Marini Museum and the Seeber Bookshop in Florence and is one of the organizers of the exhibition I Miracoli e il Volto Santo di Gesù, a large collective work on display at the Fenice in Venice in September 2011, now in permanent collection inside the Sanctuary of the Vision of Camposampiero.

Since 2007 she has been teaching Illustration at Isia in Urbino and since 2019 at the Illustration Specialist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, as well as teaching at the International School of Sarmede, province of Treviso.
But his art is also known far beyond national borders. Some of his books are in fact co-edited in France, Spain, England, Greece, Portugal, China and Taiwan. Moreover, not only in Italy, but also abroad, she participates in numerous personal and collective exhibitions, and holds courses at schools, Masters, institutions, cooperatives and libraries.

Specialized at the International School of Art Therapy in Bologna, she follows self narrative and artistic therapeutic groups and she was a volunteer at the pediatric oncohaematology department for the association Helios.