Istvan Banyai

Istvan Banyai (27 February 1949 – 15 December 2022) was a Hungarian illustrator and animator. He was born in suburban Budapest and received his BFA from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. He moved to France in 1973, then to the United States in 1981.

In 1995, Banyai produced his first wordless children's book, ''Zoom''. Honored as one of the best children's books of the year by ''The New York Times'' and ''Publishers Weekly'', ''Zoom'' was soon published in 18 languages. He went on to author four more books and illustrate many more in collaboration with other writers and poets. "It's refreshing to encounter a group of virtually wordless books that invite children to consider their world from a point of view they may not have otherwise considered. The most stunning is ''Zoom,'' written—or, rather, imagined and then illustrated—by Istvan Banyai."

Banyai also produced illustrations for ''The New Yorker'', ''Playboy'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Time'' and ''The Atlantic Monthly''; cover art for Sony and Verve Records; and animated short films for Nickelodeon and MTV Europe. He described his art as "an organic combination of turn-of-the-century Viennese retro, interjected with American pop, some European absurdity added for flavor, served on a cartoon-style color palette... no social realism added."

Having moved from Budapest to live in Paris, Los Angeles, and New York, Banyai later lived in rural Connecticut. He and his wife, Kati, had a son. Banyai died from lung cancer at a hospital in West Harrison, New York, on 15 December 2022, at the age of 73. Provided by Wikipedia