Anja Kroencke

Anja Kroenke was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1968. She studied fashion design and illustration at the College for Textile Design in Vienna, graduating in 1987.

From 1988 to 1994, Anja worked as an art director at GGK, a large advertising agency in Austria. She came to New York on holiday and fell in love with the city. So she moved to New York in 1994 and started working as a design director for Stein Rogan and Partners.

Anja worked evenings and spare-time preparing a portfolio of her drawings, and giving them to prospective clients. Her work was very much appreciated, so in 1997, she started to work full-time as an illustrator.

Anja received a Silver Award from the Society of Newspaper Design in 1997, for her cover illustration on the New York Times Style Section. In 1999 she was awarded the Silver Award by the Creative Club of Austria. She has also received several awards from the Art Director's Club in New York.

Kroencke's work has appeared in Allure, Elle, Madame Figaro, Marie Claire, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Travel and Leisure, Wallpaper, W, Femme and Vogue.

Her corporate clients include Ann Taylor, British Airways Estee Lauder, Isetan, Mattel, Motorola, New York City Opera, Polygram, Le Printemps, Harvey Nichols, Bergdorf & Goodman, Ritzenhoff Crystal, Simon and Schuster and Tiffany Japan.

Anja's elegant figures communicate through their pose and posture. She uses mixed media, including acrylic paint, gouache and collage to create her simple and highly graphic pictures.