About Helena
The Artistic Journey of Helena Klakočar
“My history is a history of migration, observation and tireless drawing.”
Education & Early Career
Helena studied printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1978–1982) and later at the Beeldende Kunst Academie in Tilburg, the Netherlands (1995–1998).
Her career began in Zagreb’s experimental arts scene of the 1980s — she co-led the multimedia group ZZOT, which merged comics and animation into installations and toured European art festivals, and was involved with Zagreb Film.
Helena Klakočar is an academic painter and printmaker, and one of the most significant graphic novel authors in Europe. Her practice spans comics, illustration, animated film, video art, and public intervention — work that functions as a form of visual journalism, documenting reality, history, and intimacy through drawing.
Moving to the Netherlands and Belgium
In the 1990s, Helena relocated to the Netherlands and Belgium, where her work gained an international dimension. She became part of the Migrative Art collective in Belgium and continued an itinerant practice moving between Croatia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
Publishing
Her books have been published in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, France, and Italy. Her five Croatian-language books include El Shatt / Fragmenti, published by the arts organization Javni Prostor, and the graphic novel Vlaga, Mraz i Sol, which explores the position of art and artists in society, the social unrest in Sarajevo, and the Occupy movement.
The Angoulême Win
In 2000, Helena’s graphic novel Passage en Douce (Nemirno More) won the Alpha-Art award for best foreign album at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême — the largest and most prestigious comics festival in Europe — along with the Radio France-Info prize.
The win placed her among the very few women ever to be awarded at Angoulême, and brought her work to an international audience. The book was subsequently published in Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, and France.