Esphyr Slobodkina
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Esphyr Slobodkina (1908-2002) was a popular artist, author, and illustrator, best known for her classic children's book Caps for Sale.
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[edit] Early life as an American abstract artist
Esphyr Slobodkina (ess-FEER sloh-BOD-kee-nah) was born in Siberia on September 22, 1908. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, she emigrated with her family to Harbin, Manchuria (China), where she studied art and architecture. Slobodkina immigrated to the United States in 1929. She enrolled at the National Academy of Design. It was there that she met her future husband, Russian born, Ilya Bolotowsky. Along with Ilya, Slobodkina was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, which began amid controversy in 1936. Like other Russian modernists, surrounded by ancient icons and a rich craft tradition, Slobodkina developed a lifelong appreciation of clear, rich colors, and flat, stylized forms.
Through the 1930s Slobodkina developed her unique method of working in oils; a flattened, abstracted style that incorporated line, suspended or interlocking forms. But by the late 30s and 40s Slobodkina was using a variety of techniques and materials. Many of her works are collages and constructions, integrating paint, wood, plastic, and metal with everyday objects such as parts of disassembled typewriters and computers into amusing and often great art. Slobodkina’s work eventually received high acclaim.
“Her life’s work pulled imagery and objects together into magnificent compositions time and time again," stated Harold Porcher, authority on the artworks of Slobodkina Slobodkina. "I equate an artist like Esphyr to the American mockingbird. A mockingbird borrows and embellishes the songs of other birds around him. Often he changes the phrasing as he incorporates each element into an orchestration of birdsong. The abstract expressionist movement shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York City – where it remains today – and Esphyr and her contemporaries were the torchbearers, establishing abstraction as a viable form of expression in America."
"Her life’s work pulled imagery and objects together into magnificent compositions time and time again," stated Harold Porcher, authority on the artworks of Slobodkina Slobodkina. "The abstract expressionist movement shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York City – where it remains today – and Slobodkina and her contemporaries were the torchbearers, establishing abstraction as a viable form of expression in America."
[edit] Career as an illustrator
During the late 1930s, Slobodkina sought employment as an illustrator. She met the children's author Margaret Wise Brown. Slobodkina illustrated many children's stories for Brown – including Sleepy ABC and the Big and Little series – while still continuing her work as an abstract artist. In the late 1930s, Slobodkina began to write and illustrate her own children's books. Among her 24 published works Caps for Sale has sold more than two million copies and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Today it is considered a children’s book classic.
Other children’s works include: Mary and The Poodies (1937; unpublished), The Wonderful Feast (written in 1928; first published in 1955), The Clock (1956), The Long Island Ducklings (1961), and Pezzo the Peddler and the Circus Elephant (1967), reissued as Circus Caps for Sale (2002).
In the last years of the 20th century, Slobodkina continued her productivity, alternating serious work on abstract paintings with the more relaxing activities - to her - of creating sculpture, wall hangings, multimedia constructions, dolls and jewelry, often made out of old typewriter and computer parts.
As Anne Cohen DePietro, formerly Chief Curator and Director, Newsday Center for Dove/Torr Studies at the Heckscher Museum of Art, stated, "Traversing nearly a century of inspiration, it is Slobodkina’s enduring delight in the creative act and her single-minded pursuit of her aesthetic vision in a multiplicity of media that continues to enchant."
[edit] Slobodkina's Legacy and the Slobodkina Foundation
In April of 2000, at age 91, Slobodkina established The Slobodkina Foundation, dedicated to the conservation, preservation, and exhibition of art. The Slobodkina Foundation was designed to educate the public about Slobodkina's work and encourage others to pursue their dreams through awareness of Slobodkina's accomplishments.
Before her death in 2002, Slobodkina redesigned her home in Long Island, New York, as a mini-museum and reading room for children, a place where guests can view more than 500 works of art. There, the charitable Slobodkina Foundation preserves the legacy of Slobodkina’s prolific, multifaceted career.
Slobodkina was a celebrated avant garde artist and feminist in the early part of the last century. Her paintings, sculptures and literary works are part of the collections of The Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Smithsonian; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Heckscher Museum of Art; Hillwood Art Museum, the Whitney Museum, New York; the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut; the Corcoran Gallery, Boston Museum; the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection, The University of Southern Mississippi; the New York Public Library; among others.
