A Drawing or Photomontage for Children? Examples of Innovative Approaches to Children’s Book Illustration in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Pages	23–34
DOI	10.37520/amnpsc.2023.0022
Keywords	illustration – books for children – art of interwar Czechoslovakia – visual culture of the first half of the 20th century – Constructivism – Civilism – Poetism
Type of Article	Peer-reviewed
Citation	BENDOVÁ, Eva a HUBÁČKOVÁ, Vilma. A Drawing or Photomontage for Children? Examples of Innovative Approaches to Children’s Book Illustration in Interwar Czechoslovakia. Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum. Prague: National Museum, 2023, 68(3-4), 23–34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37520/amnpsc.2023.0022. ISSN 2570-6861 (Print), 2570-687X (Online). Also available from: https://www.nm.cz/en/periodicals/acta-musei-nationalis-pragae-historia-litterarum/68-3-4/a-drawing-or-photomontage-for-children-examples-of-innovative-approaches-to-childrens-book-illustration-in-interwar-czechoslovakia

Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum | 2023/68/3-4

The aim of the paper has been to show the plethora of innovative approaches to the illustration of books for children in the interwar period in Czechoslovakia (1918–1938). In a journal focused on education and literature (Úhor [Fallow]), the first synthetic text devoted to the aesthetics of children’s books was published as late as 1935, written by Josef Novák. His text perceives the illustrations of children’s books as an important and distinctive artistic expression dependent on the drawing conception of a form. It highlights the most modern examples in the form of the book of Zdenka Marčanová and Toyen, Náš svět [Our World], but not without reservations; it provides another modern example in Karel Čapek’s Dášeňka, on whose typography Karel Teige worked in 1933. The artistic potential of illustration is thus dominated by the individual approaches of particular authors. As early as 1918, the anthology Nůše pohádek [A Basketful of Fairy Tales] brought some unconventional illustrations, adopting elements from progressive art movements. Jeníkovy pohádky [Jack’s Fairy Tales], written and illustrated by Jan Zrzavý in 1920, enriched the visual appearance of children’s books with variations of dream imagery and with the interconnection of image and text according to the author’s concept with the involvement of a visually dominant and aesthetically modified typeface. In particular in Milada Marešová’s drawings published at the turn of the 1930s, it is possible to observe a new way of working with traditional means of expression. Her drawings were a reaction to the contemporary foreign approaches of the New Objectivity. In the early 1930s, Josef Čapek’s book graphics and illustrations were characterised by a shift towards multimedia. The involvement of the avant-garde painter Toyen in children’s book illustration proceeds from Civilism to Surrealism. A distinctly avant-garde form was given to the experimentally conceived popular-educational book by J. V. Pleva Kapka vody [A Drop of Water] in the graphic design of Zdeňek Rossmann, who creatively combined typography with photomontage. Photomontage was used by Augustin Tschinkel in his popular-educational books, either together with Ladislav Sutnar, for instance in Malá vlastivěda [A Little Civics Reader]), or on his own in the book Zeměpisné rebusy [Geographical Rebuses]. The works of the last three mentioned avant-garde artists are typical examples of the progressive graphic design where graphic symbols have been replaced by illustrations. These publications were created within a new model of cooperation – collaboration between a typographer, designer and illustrator in an authorial whole. Significantly radical experiments applying constructivist aesthetics and involving photography were unique in children’s literature in Czechoslovakia.

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