Margaux Romano

Margaux Romano was born in Lodi in 2001, where she began her artistic journey. She moved to Bologna in 2021, where she is studying the Comics and Illustration course at the Academy. In her work, she often blends analogue and digital techniques, drawing primarily on wax pastels, collage and watercolour. Colour plays a significant role in her illustrations, as do the interplay of proportions and the exploration of atmosphere.

She won the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Fundación SM 2026 Award with the following citation:
“The jury of the BCB – Fundación SM International Illustration Prize was impressed by this artist’s distinctive style, professional approach, boldness and personality – qualities all the more remarkable given her young age. Margaux Romano demonstrates the wisdom, confidence and mastery of tools typical of an experienced illustrator. Her work reveals a brilliant use of contrast, both in the lines and colours and in the dimensions of the elements arranged across the double page. She succeeds in blending abstract and figurative language with a marked ability to organise space, balancing full and empty areas, light and shadow, including through visual disproportion.
Beneath the surface, one senses a philosophical theme of alienation or loneliness: human feelings that even a child can recognise and identify with. At its core, design culture merges with a solid artistic training.
For these reasons, the jury has decided to award the 2026 Prize to Margaux Romano.”