Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sunday Safari - Goodbye Tiger



1960's wooden Tiger wall plaque, originally from a French Circus, at Fears and Kahn

We are approaching the end of The Year of the Tiger 
and I wanted to salute these majestic, wonderful creatures 
who unfortunately are constantly under threat of extinction.
Long live the Tiger!

André Hellé, Grosses bêtes and petites bêtes, 1912,
thanks to the always wonderful A Journey Round My Skull

  Sergio RuffoloTigre homemade greeting card

 Meg Hunt for the Cloudy Collection

Celestino Piatti, illustration for Der goldene Apfel: Eine Geschichte, 1970
found thanks to a lovely post about tigers on Booktryst

Cathie BleckTiger

 Ian McArthur, Tiger

Jan Młodożeniec, Tygrysek, 1961 

Sebastiano Ranchetti, Little Tiger


Dale Maxey, illustration from The Wild and woolly animal book, 1966,  
thanks to Bonito Club

 Pierre Bevès, Le tigre en bois, 1961, thanks to maptitefabrique

Antonio LigabueTigre con ragno, 1953


 Józef Wilkon, Ksiega Dzungli (the Jungle book)

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Avant-Garde in the Nursery



Polish avant-garde artist Franciszka Themerson (1907-1988) illustrated the delightful 
My First Nursery Book in 1947. Franciszka was a woman of many talentswhose 
endeavours included painting, illustration, graphic design, stage design, 
art direction, publishing, film-making and marionette theatre. 
In many of these projects she was accompanied by her husband, the writer, 
composer and film-maker Stefan Themerson, whom she married in 1931.
Visit the Themerson Archive to appreciate the many collaborative
efforts of this wonderfully creative couple.





My First Nursery Book includes four classic tales: Who Killed Cock Robin?
The Gingerbread Man, Three Little Pigs and The Three Bears.
It was republished by Tate in 2009.











The cover and endpapers scans come from a guest post on Curious Pages,
in which illustrator Carson Ellis presented some of the spreads from the book. 


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Matazo Kayama



Matazo Kayama (1927-2004) was born in Kyoto, the son of a designer of Kimono. 
He used to play in his father's studio, and loved to see him and his disciples
at work sketching and painting. He also learned a lot from his father's collection 
of international art books. Kayama started making art, and when he was 13 years old
he entered the Japanese Painting Academy in Kyoto. In 1944 he went on to study 
traditional Nihonga techniques at Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts, at a time 
when the country was in the grips of World War II. His father died at the end 
of the war, but Kayama managed to keep studying art in Tokyo 
while helping his mother and younger sisters in Kyoto. 





 A Thousand Cranes, 1970, a pair of six-fold silk screens, 1.6 x 3.7m each
(click on the image to enlarge)



Kayama became a famous painter in his early 30's and held his first personal exhibitio
abroad in New York in 1961. Animals were one of his favorite themes throughout his career, 
while his sources of inspiration shifted from modern Western art to traditional RImpa Japanese 
painting and Chinese ink paintings. All of these influences were reinterpreted through Kayama's 
own refined and innovative style. His work has been exhibited at the Central Museum of Beijing 
and the British Museum, and in 2009 a large retrospective was held at Tokyo's National Art Center.



thanks to Sandi Vincent for this image






Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Tree and the Cat


Another lovely and melancholy Russian animation from Niffiwan's
fantastic You Tube channel Animatsiya in English.
Directed by Yevgeny Sivokon at Kievnauchfilm in 1983.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sunday Safari – Prickly & Sweet




Mirko Hanak, Animals We Love, 1972, thanks to art.crazed

 EricailcanePalloncino

Andrea MarescalchiArricciato

 Ferdinand BauerErinaceus from Fauna Graeca, or Animals of the Levant, Vol. 1

Chen Yu Ping, Fruits in Frost, print from Heilongjiang

 Miumau (?)

 Sabater Pi, 1964, thanks to a beautiful recent post on BibliOdyssey


 Vladimir ZimakovFinnish landscape


 Yuri VasnetsovRuff kids

Patricia Mullins, All in together, 1974, thanks to flamenconut

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