ArtEZ-alumni receive Fiep Westendorp Stimuleringsprijs 2025

Alumni

About Moos Boeke

About Abel Dijkstra

About Vera Wolsink

The Fiep Westendorp Stimuleringsprijs are presented every two years to three talented illustrators. Each award consists of €20,000, giving the recipients two years to develop a special project that would be harder to realise without financial support. The awards will be presented on 17 December during the Fiep Westendorp Day at Theater De Krakeling in Amsterdam.

Zwolle-alumni collective

For the 2025 edition, Jingran He, Donna Kroese and the collective of Moos Boeke, Abel Dijkstra and Vera Wolsink received the award as a collective. The three alumni, trained at ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Zwolle, work as illustrators and visual storytellers at the intersection of illustration, comics and graphic novels. Boeke and Wolsink studied Illustration Design; Dijkstra studied Comic Design.

Heroes with humour

With the award, they will realise a visual retelling of the Iliad, the classical Greek epic. Their version will be a contemporary, experimental and humorous visual narrative, in which they explore the boundaries between text and image and play with different modes of storytelling. According to the jury, the strength of the collective lies in the three illustrators’ distinctly different styles, which reinforce and support one another within the joint project.