Andrey Gennadiev
Russian artist Andrey Gennadiev has illustrated two contrasting editions of Wonderland, both grounded in Vladimir Nabokov’s bold Russian translation, where Alice becomes Anya, and the story is reframed through a uniquely local lens. The first, published in 1989 by Detskaya Literatura, is a small-format, monochrome volume rendered in expressive shades of blue. Its stylized, symbolic imagery captures the experimental aesthetic of the late Soviet era with poetic subtlety.
In 2020, the publishing house Andrea released a dramatically expanded bilingual edition (Russian-English), large in format and filled with luminous full-color illustrations. Graphic design plays a central role: each spread is carefully composed, with richly illustrated frames surrounding the text and guiding the reader through a world in constant metamorphosis. These decorative borders immerse the reader. Gennadiev transforms each page into a vivid dreamscape, blending Carroll’s surrealism with Nabokov’s idiosyncratic language and his own painterly exuberance.
The 1989 edition feels introspective and quietly profound, shaped by its historical moment, while the 2020 version radiates freedom, enchantment, and chromatic delight. Yet in both, Gennadiev turns Alice into a living painting—at times melancholic, at times feverish—revealing singular facets of a classic that never ceases to transform.
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to alter the gaze—through shifts in color, framing, and design, the same figures step into a different mood, revealing that Wonderland is not only what is shown, but how it is seen.
Giovanni
Robustelli
Giovanni Robustelli, 2012
Giovanni Robustelli, a Sicilian artist known as the “pen genius,” works with a wide range of techniques—especially ballpoint pen. His large-scale drawings are created without preparatory sketches, allowing the stroke to flow freely, almost like unconscious writing. His art is marked by a rhythmic energy, where each line creates a tactile texture, and every element blends into the next, forming an organic, hybridized whole. In addition to traditional exhibitions, his works come to life in live performances, in collaboration with musicians, where sound and image intertwine, intensifying the sensory experience. Robustelli’s relationship with the world of Alice in Wonderland began in 2010, with a series of six illustrations published in a limited edition by Edizioni Papel.
In 2018, the same publisher released a special Italian edition of Alice, combining two series of illustrations created ten years apart for a Milanese gallery. The publication contrasts two distinct styles: on one side, “Alice . . . e i Suoi Amici” (Alice . . . and Her Friends, 2012), which includes watercolors and pen drawings where Alice seems to dissolve into the landscape—her form blending with cards, forests, and fantastic creatures in an experience of metamorphosis and hybridization. On the other side, “Meraviglie nel Paese di Alice” (Wonders in Alice’s Land, 2018) offers pen drawings on cardboard, where rhythmic, expressive lines intensify the strangeness and symbolic depth of the work. In this second series, the figures become more abstract, representing the dreamlike fluidity and constant transformation of Alice’s world. In Robustelli’s hands, Alice is a dream in perpetual transformation—a cycle of dissolution, invention, and rebirth.
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to let the line wander through imagination and thought—each stroke tracing the fluid edges of dreams, where figures dissolve and reassemble in a rhythm of perpetual transformation.
Gavin O’Keefe
Gavin O’Keefe’s work on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has evolved through three distinct phases, each reimagining Carroll’s classic. His journey began in the mid-1980s, illustrating Alice from the heart before securing a publisher.
His first edition, The GO Alice (Carroll Foundation, 1990), is an intricate pen-and-ink work infused with historical and intertextual, Celtic, and surreal influences, creating a world of dark humor and mystery. After completely re-illustrating Wonderland and illustrating Looking-Glass, he combined both into The Alice Books (Ramble House, 2010)
O’Keefe’s early Alice illustrations reflect his love for Gothic literature—H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe—and surrealism, leaning into dark, atmospheric horror, while the later edition adopts more open compositions, shifting toward a streamlined, three-dimensional aesthetic. He is currently developing a third, full-color edition that enhances emotional expressiveness and visual complexity. This new Alice will incorporate more references than ever, weaving in Cold War–era science, politics, and pop culture alongside sixteenth- and nineteenth-century influences—reinforcing O’Keefe’s belief that Wonderland transcends anachronisms, existing in multiple dimensions of time.
[To dive deeper, please read his Illustrator Spotlight in KL 113 and Arnold Hirshon’s article on him in Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English-Language Editions (ATBOSH, 2023, pp. 402–408).]
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to navigate a labyrinth of time and imagination—where Gothic shadows, surreal echoes, and cultural fragments converge in ever-shifting forms. Wonderland, in O’Keefe’s hands, becomes a portal through which thought, memory, and mystery dream together.
Dmitry Trubin
According to Russian artist Dmitry Trubin, his first reading of Alice took place in 1991, when the Soviet publishing house Molodaya Gvardiya invited him to illustrate the book. Although the illustrations were completed that same year, the economic crisis of 1992 halted production. The book was eventually published in 2002 as a tête-bêche (reversible) edition: Wonderland on one side and Looking-Glass on the other. Trubin described this early version as unusually luminous and refined, with a cool, ethereal color palette and a distinctly stylized atmosphere. He sought to create a personal vision of Alice, one that would stand apart from the beloved interpretations by Kalinovski, Vashchenko, Miturich, and many others. His Alice took shape with wide blue eyes, straight hair, and delicate hand gestures—features that, years later, would echo in the face of his daughter Katya, born three years after the illustrations were finished.
In 2017, Trubin returned to both Alice books, creating a new bilingual Russian edition through his own press, Niburt. This second version explores spatial experimentation more boldly, aligning with Carroll’s layered logic and playful impossibilities. Working in large-format watercolor, with areas of collage and even a photograph of his daughter subtly integrated, Trubin constructs a visual narrative full of geometric shifts and gentle disruptions. Wonderland is rendered with flat, decorative planes that echo the motif of playing cards, while Looking-Glass adopts a more austere, monochromatic treatment—evoking the rigidity of chess. The space in these images often appears serene at first glance, but is subtly undermined by distortions and near-invisible shifts that, once noticed, unravel the internal logic of the scene. “It’s a game,” Trubin said, “a game that is both readable and hidden.” The result is a deeply personal and visually compelling Alice, where the uncanny becomes the viewer’s entry point, and the familiar world is turned, ever so slightly, askew.
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to play with perception—bending space with quiet precision, layering memory, geometry, and emotion until the familiar tilts into the uncanny. In Trubin’s vision, Wonderland becomes a map of hidden games, where what seems still is already shifting.
Tatiana Ianovskaia
Tatiana Ianovskaia, 2008.
Tatiana Ianovskaia’s (Татьяна Юрьевна Яновская) journey with Alice began in 1967, when, at age seven, she discovered a Soviet edition that captivated her with its humor and illustrations. In the rigid USSR, Alice offered an escape into imagination. At eighteen, she began illustrating the story, drawing inspiration from her surroundings—cramped living conditions (mirroring Alice in the Rabbit’s house) in a remote Georgian village providing solitude for artistic exploration. In 1998, her work was exhibited in post-Soviet Russia, marking a pivotal moment before her immigration to Canada, where Alice became a bridge between her past and her new reality.
Her first illustrated Alice was published in Russia (Uzorochie, 2003) followed by editions under Tania Press in Toronto (2005, 2008). She later illustrated Through the Looking-Glass (2011) and The Hunting of the Snark (2012), alongside Alice-themed playing cards and The Mad Gardener’s Song.
Her style blends folk art with stained-glass aesthetics, influenced by Niko Pirosmani’s bold colors and dreamlike simplicity. Her compositions merge the ordinary and the fantastical, evoking nostalgia and displacement. Through symbolic imagery, she captures Carroll’s wordplay and paradoxes, reinventing familiar episodes with fresh visual angles. Notably, she depicts Time—Cronos—arguing with the Mad Hatter, a scene rarely illustrated.
Ianovskaia’s Alice, shaped by exile and transformation, mirrors her own evolving journey.
[To dive deeper, read her interview in KL 96.]
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to chart an inner country—where myth and history blur, and the everyday twists into uncanny visions. Ianovskaia's Wonderland thrives on estrangement, turning dislocation into discovery and memory into nonsense and paradox.
Júlia Sardà
Júlia Sardà, an illustrator from Barcelona, has created two richly imagined editions, each offering a distinct visual and emotional tone. The first, Alice au pays des merveilles, (Fleurus, 2013) features a light-haired Alice with exaggerated proportions, shifting between “cute” and “spooky.” She wears a faded blue dress, adding to the eerie and melancholic atmosphere. The compositions are bold and angular, with theatrical use of space and dark, moody tones that evoke a dreamlike, almost nightmarish quality. This Alice seems frightened and disoriented, caught in a Wonderland that feels both magical and unsettling.
In contrast, the second edition, in English (Two Hoots, 2019) presents a dark-haired Alice inspired by Miss Liddell. She wears a structured white dress, which, combined with her more composed expression, gives her a sense of poise and resolve. The illustrations are no less elaborate, rich in layered composition, spatial invention, and intricate detail. As in the first edition, the mood is dreamlike, but now tinged with wonder and quiet intensity rather than fear. This version’s Alice appears more determined, moving through surreal landscapes with a calm sense of curiosity. Both editions reflect Sardà’s mastery of atmosphere and visual storytelling, each transforming the classic tale into a fully immersive, emotionally charged world. (Sardà also illustrated Kathleen Krull’s One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll (KL 100:61)
Re-illustration is not mere repetition, it is a dialogue with the past and a portal to new possibilities. What makes Alice inexhaustible is her mutability—constantly growing, shrinking, transforming, and questioning. Carroll’s text, rich in symbolism, paradox, and nonsense, resists a single interpretation. Like Wonderland itself, Alice defies fixed logic, inviting artists into a creative game of mirroring, distortion, and reinvention.
Commen: To reillustrate Alice is to reflect her shifting stance—moving from bewildered melancholy to poised confrontation. Sardà’s Wonderland is a theatre of layered moods, where each version of Alice rewrites the script: first as a haunted dreamer, then as a lucid navigator of the strange.
George Walker
In another example of evolving media, engraver George Walker produced stunning woodcuts for the fine-press Cheshire Cat editions of Wonderland (1988) and Looking-Glass (1998) (see KL 55:7). His first Alice, released in 1988, marked the debut of the Cheshire Cat Press and brought an eccentric and highly textured wood-engraved vision to Carroll’s classic, far removed from Victorian restraint. In 2024, Walker and Andy Malcolm returned to the tale once again, this time embracing AI-generated imagery to reinterpret Alice for a new era. Adriana Peliano will comment on the AI-generated edition in the same issue of the Knight Letter.
Comment: To reillustrate Alice is to reinvent the medium itself—from the tactile precision of wood engraving to the generative logic of AI. Walker’s journey reveals that Wonderland is not bound by technique, but thrives in the tension between craft and innovation, tradition and transformation.
Adriana Peliano
See pictures: LINK
I myself have illustrated Wonderland four times and Looking-Glass three times, each through a different prism, diving into both the collective and personal unconscious. My first exploration, Alicinações (“Alicinations,” 1996–1998), transformed Carroll’s narrative into a tapestry of visual puns and paradoxes. Using mixed media, collages, assemblages, and vintage photographs, I created a hybrid, metamorphic Wonderland where Alice’s identity constantly dissolves and reconfigures. This project, my BA thesis, was presented at Carroll’s centenary celebration at Christ Church, Oxford (1998).
For my second shot, the 150th-Anniversary Celebration Edition of Alice (Zahar, 2015). I delved into the interplay of dreams and mathematics, merging Alice with the surrealism of Bosch, Dalí, and Magritte, as well as the impossible geometries of Escher and Reutersvärd. Constructed by dismantling and recombining the colored illustrations of The Nursery “Alice,” these collages wove tradition and reinvention into a single visual experience.
My third journey, Alice Quebra-Cabeça (“Alice Puzzle”), (LCSBrazil, 2022) became a Tangram-inspired picture book, created in collaboration with my five-year-old nephew. Using photographs of wooden, tinted puzzle pieces, we built an interactive narrative where characters and settings could be endlessly reassembled, reaffirming Wonderland as a realm of games and discovery.
In my latest dive, AI-CE (LCSBrazil, 2024) I reimagined my approach through artificial intelligence, blending illustrations, animations, and generative processes. This hybrid method mirrors Alice’s symbolic initiation into shifting, illogical landscapes. AI-CE Looking-Glass further explored the themes of chance and metamorphosis, fusing art and technology in an ever-evolving process.
Comment:
To reillustrate Alice is to embrace metamorphosis—each journey reshapes Wonderland through new mediums, from collage to AI, dissolving and reconfiguring its endless possibilities.
EXTRA:
The Art of alicescopic Reimagination
Alice’s enduring presence in art comes from her infinite capacity for reinvention. Each generation of illustrators reinterprets Wonderland, responding to artistic movements, cultural shifts, and personal visions. While most, but not all, early artists followed Tenniel’s canon, contemporary illustrators embrace experimental approaches, expanding Alice’s visual language through digital tools, mixed media, and AI. Reillustration is not mere repetition—it is a dialogue with the past and a portal to new possibilities.
What makes Alice inexhaustible is her mutability—constantly growing, shrinking, transforming, and questioning. Carroll’s text, rich in symbolism, paradox, and nonsense, resists singular interpretation. Like Wonderland itself, Alice defies fixed logic, inviting artists into a creative game of mirroring, distortion, and reinvention. No longer just a Victorian girl, she becomes a living Alicescope, shifting and reshaping with each artistic lens, escaping not only the boundaries of the page but also those of time and media. Like a reflection in a thousand mirrors, every Alice emerges distinct, shaped by the gaze of the viewer and the moment in which she is met.
"What are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you are trying to invent something!" Alice sets out anew, only to reinvent herself once again. The Alice books form an ever-expanding web of creative possibilities, where artists choose their own paths—much like the Cheshire Cat’s riddle. Each image opens a new door, forming a labyrinth of interpretations, an Alicescope of reflections where every vision sparks another.
Between ink, brushstrokes, pixels, algorithms, and endless iterations, Alice slips past the enigmagic clock, embodying not just her time but imagination itself—stretching, shrinking, twisting, and glitching the impossible into the now. She is always becoming, as she tells the Caterpillar, and perhaps that is where the wonder lies. As Alberto Manguel once said, Alice is an infinite book—one that continues to unfold beyond its pages.
References
Hirshon, Arnold, The Many Faces of Wonderland: An Exhibition Guide and Annotations, Kelvin Smith Library Special Collections & Archives, 2023.
Lindseth, Jon, and Alan Tannenbaum (eds.), Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece, Oak Knoll Press, 2015.
Rybicka-Tomala, Karolina, “Translating Tenniel: Discovering the Traces of Tenniel’s Wonderland in Olga Siemaszko’s Vision of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” in Kérchy, Anna and Björn Sundmark (eds.), Translating and Transmediating Children’s Literature, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Ovenden, Graham, and John Davis, The Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, St. Martin’s Press, 1972.
Vaizey, Marina, Michèle Noret, and Jan Švankmajer, Illustrating Alice: An International Selection of Illustrated Editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Artist’s Choice Editions, 2013.
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