Hi there, my name is Rita Fürstenau and I live in Kassel, Germany. Besides working as a freelance illustrator and surface pattern designer, I work as an arts pedagogue and I run the independent publishing house Rotopol. This is where most of my work is published. Here you can find my illustration booklets, paper games, posters, postcards, sketch booklets and some printed textiles like tea towels and tote bags.
I was born in 1982 in Berlin and grew up in Frankfurt/Main and a small village in the eastern part of Hesse. Since 2001 I live and work in Kassel. Here I studied illustration at the School of Arts and Design as well as primary school teaching and educational science at the University. In 2007 I co-founded the independent publisher Rotopol for graphic storytelling. It was our goal to create a possibility to publish projets with a strong personal style, on a high creative level and independent from short-lived market trends, while being able to create our own working conditions and collaborating with a continuously growing network of contemporary illustrators, comic artists and designers.
Our range of products focuses mainly on comics and illustration books, but also includes paper games, postcards, hand‐made sketch booklets and totes. Apart from the publishing house, Rotopol includes a retail store and an integrated art gallery where we set up exhibitions year-round. We also have a screen printing workshop that is run by my husband and most likely this is where you can find me on the weekends.
I also work as an arts pedagogue and give workshops on comic drawing, illustration and screen printing. Since 2011 I teach at Kassel’s art school for children and teenagers, where I work with people from the ages of three up to twenty and for the Stiftung Deutsches Designmuseum.
