A REFINING PALETTE:

Children’s Book Illustration in Poland, 1960s-1970s

   

Beth Holmgren Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies

Duke University

THURSDAY, Feb. 20, 2014, 5 PM MONROE 122

Polish posters took the art world by storm in the 1960s and 1970s, but relatively few non-Poles realize that these decades also marked a golden age in Polish book illustration. Prewar masters and postwar iconoclasts treated Polish children to a parade of sophisticated, vibrant, and often grotesque images in their picture books. This lecture/show demonstrates how Polish illustrators conditioned children to envision more playful worlds than the drab one in which they lived, connecting them early on with the fantastic, the theatrical, and the absurd. Specific illustrators highlighted include Janusz Stanny, Olga Siemaszko, and Bohdan Butenko.

Polish Lecture Series: Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies