This year’s Grand Prix Töpffer honors 58-year-old Anna Sommer for her role as an ambassador for Swiss comics and her significant contribution to contemporary comics, as the canton and city of Geneva announced on Thursday.
Sommer was born in Staffelbach, in the canton of Aargau. She lives and works in Zurich. A trained graphic designer, she has been working as an illustrator and comic artist for over 30 years. Her debut work, *Damen Dramen*, was published in 1996. The sometimes frivolous wordless stories featuring and centered on women were so successful that Sommer has been working as a freelance comic artist and illustrator ever since.
That same year, the graphic novel was published in French translation under the title “Remue-Ménage.” In 1997, it was nominated for the Prix Coup de cœur at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. On Thursday, Geneva highlighted what was at the time “a unique voice in a field where female authors were still rare.”
Since the 1990s, media outlets such as “NZZ Folio,” “Die Zeit,” “Libération,” “WoZ,” and “Strapazin” have also been publishing Sommer’s illustrations. Her work is published in German- and French-speaking regions. Collage portraits, short graphic stories, graphic novels: her colorful work is characterized by her distinctive line work, which dissects human and romantic relationships, longings and conflicts, roles and identities.
Among the awards Sommer has received to date are the 2017 Comic Grant from the Cities of German-Speaking Switzerland for “L’Inconnu” (German: “Das Unbekannte,” 2018) and, in May 2024, the Max and Moritz Prize in Erlangen, Bavaria—the highest honor in the German-language comics world.
Her major solo exhibition, “A tire-d’aile. Anna Sommer en dialogue avec les collections,” has just opened in Strasbourg. It will be on view at the Musée Tomi Ungerer through February 28, 2027.
