ABOUT JONATHAN CALUGI
Jonathan Calugi is an Italian illustrator based in Pistoia (Tuscany).
Calugi defines himself as a chaotic and messy person, and his drawings well show the effort of tidying things up to then going back to chaos.
Jonathan never chased this career. It just happened to be, he says. As a little kid, his mother motivated him to undertake a creative path, as his grandfather was an illustrator. Probably for this, he then applied for the Art Academy. But he also soon left it after he broke his arm and never returned – an event that shows his open attitude towards life.
Known today as an illustrator and art director, Jonathan stands out in the contemporary design scene for his minimalist lines with whom he realizes his artworks. It’s through his graphic gesture that he creates multi-layered stories. Mainly, he depicts the world in front of him with one seemingly continuous line, underlined by bold geometric forms.
Recognized by his process, his drawings go from confusion to order to disorder. He uses some digital approaches to create his most recent projects, although he also experimented with silkscreen.
CAREER
Besides being a prolific artist, Jonathan has participated as a keynote speaker at festivals worldwide. ING festival in Dubai and the Design Conference in Brisbane (AUS) just to name a few.
He started by establishing A Smile for Timbuctu through which he first found his first commissioned works.
He worked for several famous brands as Google, Shutterstock, Expo Dubai, Airbnb, and many more. Also, Jonathan won the Webby Award 2015, the New Visual Artist 2010 by Print Magazine and the ADC Young Guns 2010.
In 2017 he realized a project called “one love Airbnb 2017″, a series of drawings representing how the company manages to connect people globally. The project consists of one black line depicting human silhouettes, overlapped by everyday objects to reflect the variety that Airbnb offers for its clients worldwide. Later, Calugi completed the project title with “one line, one love, one world”.
One of his favorite projects though, is Lovers, a trilogy and limited edition of silkscreens he realized for the studio 108hilos. The drawings initially depict two lovers that we loose in the following steps to know they reconnect in one unique figure, the “one”.
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To know more about his work, go here.
