Lívia Rusz

Lívia Rusz (Cluj, 28 September 1930 – 26 February 2020) was a Romanian and Hungarian graphic artist, known mainly for her illustration and comic strip work. During Romania's communist period she was one of the most recognizable names in these fields, and her children's comics remain a reference point for that country's tradition.

Born in Cluj into a Hungarian-Romanian family, she trained at the art institute there under the painter Zoltán Kovács, whom she regarded as her mentor. She completed her studies in 1955 and worked as an assistant at the institute for three years, until an administrative restructuring cost her the post. She then began writing for children's magazines. With Lucia Olteanu, at the Luminița periodical, she created the strips Rățoiul Mac and Cocofifi, which won her a large young readership.

She became a regular collaborator of the publisher Ion Creangă and one of its main illustrators. Her work included reprints of classic Romanian children's literature, an edition of Ion Creangă's Childhood Memories, and the first Romanian-language edition of Tolkien's The Hobbit, published in 1975. In 1987 she settled in Budapest, where she kept working and is also recognized within the Hungarian comics school.

Her legacy continued after 1989 through monographs and tributes, and her work reached foreign readers in the 1970s and 1980s through translations.