Agi Lamm

• Name — Agi Lamm • Birth Name — Magdalena Agnes Lamm • Born — 7 October 1914 • Birthplace — Budapest, Hungary • Died — 25 December 1996 • Notable Works — Illustrated "La Serenita" by Hans Christian Andersen • Awards — The Festival Nacional Infantil (1945) 1st place

Magdalena Agnes Lamm was born on 7 June 1914 in Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were well-off and owned land, and she grew up on the puszta—the plains in Hungary—as an only child. Lamm was of Jewish descent. Lamm's family moved out of the plains and into Budapest in the mid 1920s. She briefly attended a girls' boarding school in Budapest, before she moved to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she lived with her mother in the late 1920s. Between 1930 and 1932, she began attending Vienna's Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School). At the school, she studied fashion design and took classes under artist Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill. She later worked as a set designer in Vienna, designing for literary cabarets. In 1938, she left Austria and fled to France due to her "fear of racial harassment". She lived in exile for two years; in 1939, she moved to Bolivia, before finally arriving in Argentina in 1940. She settled down in Argentina and became a book illustrator in Buenos Aires, drawing under the pseudonym "Agi". She illustrated for the music publisher Ricordi and later the publisher Editorial Abril. In 1945, she won first prize at the Festival Nacional Infantil, for illustrations in La Sirenita by Hans Christian Andersen. In 1950, she began illustrating for the book series "Colección Yo soy", working alongside Susi Hochstimm.

Later in her life, Lamm developed Parkinson's disease. She was unable to continue making art with the disorder, and died in Buenos Aires on 25 August 1996.