Lina Itagaki

Lina Itagaki (b. 1979) is an illustrator and comics artist from Lithuania. In 2003 she received a bachelor’s degree of international economy at the International Christian University in Japan. Later, while working for a Japanese video games company as a temporary manager and Japanese language translator she felt a strong urge to learn to draw. After taking private classes for 5 years she entered the Vilnius Academy of Arts and in 2014 received a bachelor degree of graphic art (printmaking).
In 2015, her illustrations from A Picture Book for Tomorrow, which was created while studying at the art academy, received the 3rd place award at the Book Art exhibition Illustration and books 2015 in Vilnius, Lithuania and TOP 10 illustrators award at COW International Design Festival Illustration 2015 in Ukraine. In 2016 short comic was published in a comics anthology “Drawing the XXth Century: Comics on Lithuanian, Belarusian and German Family Stories“, which was presented at the Comics Invasion Berlin festival in 2017.
Sibiro Haiku (tr. Siberian Haiku, written by Jurga Vilė) published in 2017, was Lina’s 1st full size graphic novel and the most successful project – it was nominated the Main Year’s Award at the Book Art contest, was selected as the most beautiful book of the year 2017 and won many other awards in Lithuania. The book was already published in French, Italian, English and Latvian.
In 2018 Lina participated in a German project devoted to migration and exile movements in Europe after the Second World War and created a short comic which was published in the anthology “Redrawing Stories from the Past II“.
In 2019 Lina’s first illustrated book for children about Lithuanian history was published and in 2020 a historical biographical comic draw by Lina was published in Albania. It tells a real story of an Albanian ichthyologist Sabiha Kasimati (1912-1951), a brave woman and a great scientist, who became a victim of the communist regime of Enver Hoxha.
This year, in 2021, the historical biographical comic book illustrated by Lina Grybo auksas (tr. Grybas Gold) was published. It tells a life story of Vincas Grybas – one of the most famous 20th century Lithuanian sculptor.