“The studio is in Mitte, the center of the former East Berlin, I have one wall of the studio with three beautiful big old windows that looks into a park (Weinbergspark).”

Andrea Ventura, born in Milan, Italy, in 1968, moved to New York in 1991. His work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek and many other national and international newspapers, magazines and books. His awards include gold and silver medals from The Society of Illustrators for his portraits of Latrell Sprewell, Jorge Luis Borges and Glenn Gould and a gold medal at the Lead Awards 2010. Andrea Ventura lives in Brooklyn and Berlin, Germany.

FROM YOUR DESKS: Those fish are lovely; what’s for dinner?

ANDREA VENTURA: I wanted to make a painting with three fish… I haven’t finished it yet, but I ate them.

FYD: The books on Araki and Godard; are you studying their form? It’s hard to believe Breathless just turned 50 and is still such a visual feat.

AV: The books were on the table because I bought them, both had the same color but I didn’t realize that. I like all Godard’s earlier work until the late 60’s. I think the two dancing scenes of Anna Karina in “Band Of Outsiders and “My Life to Live” are fantastic. I could watch them everyday.

FYD: Your studio appears blissfully unplugged from the digital world. It evokes another time.

AV: Nice, though I am connected with the internet and I use it a lot.

FYD: Your series of paintings entitled “Sunday Afternoon” remain still and gray; almost isolated. Were are the inhabitants?

AV: I think the inhabitants from the interiors are gone, really far away and maybe for good, though their soul is in there.

FYD: I was just looking back at your My Grandmother’s War Stories in the New York Times. Fresh off Veterans Day, the images remain extremely powerful. I loved Waltz with Bashir; war stories are really told well through animation and illustration. Have you considered illustrating a book dedicated to her stories?

AV: I haven’t seen Waltz With Bashir. It’s funny, I am actually making a book about my Grandmother’s life right now for a Dutch Publisher…I should finish it by May but I still have lots of work to do.