Lea Heinrich, born in 1984, lives and works as an illustrator in Kassel.
She studied Visual Communication with a focus on comic and illustration with Prof. Hendrik Dorgathen at the Kunsthochschule in Kassel. During this time she was awarded a grant at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, where she took part in courses by the Canadian illustrator Michèle Lemieux and the Polish graphic artist Zygmunt Januszewski. She also completed a semester abroad at the Faculty for Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon.
Since graduating in 2012 and the year as a master’s student with Prof. Hendrik Dorgathen she has been working as an independent illustrator. During a work stay in Brooklyn, NY from 2013 to 2015 she created comics and illustrations for numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Smoke Signal, The Pitchfork Review, and The Lifted Brow. This was followed later by works for clients such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel.
In 2015 Lea Heinrich was one of the finalists for the Comic Book Prize of the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung in Stuttgart with her book project “Lucky Boy.” In the same year her comic “Hearsay” was published by Rotopol.
Since 2020 she has been artistic associate with Prof. Hendrik Dorgathen’s Comic and Illustration class in the Visual Communication program.