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Esphyr
Slobodkina
(pronounced ess-FEER sloh-BOD-kee-nah)
was born in the
Siberian town of Chelyabinsk on September 22, 1908. She grew up in
Harbin, Manchuria (China), where she studied art and architecture.
She immigrated to the United States on a student visa at the age of
19 and enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City.
In 1937, Slobodkina
became one of the founding members of
American Abstract Artists
(AAA), along with her then-husband, Ilya Bolotowsky. She was the
organization’s first secretary and later served as president and
treasurer, as well as its bibliographer. She was a regular exhibitor
in AAA annual shows and a close associate of the “Park Avenue
Cubists”: George L.K. Morris, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Charles Green Shaw,
and A.E. Gallatin. In 1940, Gallatin, who owned two of her works,
organized her first major one-person exhibition at his influential Gallery of Living
Art.
 During
this period, Slobodkina met children's book author Margaret Wise Brown.
In preparation for an interview with Brown, Slobodkina presented a
series of innovative collage illustrations for a children's book she
wrote called Mary and the Poodies. Brown and her publisher
found Slobodkina's abstract collage style refreshing and new, and
subsequently hired her to illustrate The Little Fireman
(1938). Possibly the first children's book to be illustrated
completely with cut-paper collage, the Little Fireman was
later deemed "the apogee of modernism in a picture book" by Barbara
Bader.
With the
encouragement of Margaret Wise Brown, Slobodkina continued to write on
her own. Her first independent effort –
The Wonderful Feast
– was written in
1938 or 1939 but was not published until 1955. Her second book –
Caps for Sale
– published in 1940,
has sold more than two million copies and has been translated into
more than a dozen languages. Today it is considered a classic.
Leonard Marcus, a renown children's book scholar, has noted that "as
the first picture book artist to experiment with collage, Slobodkina
pointed the way for many later artists. Directly or indirectly, the
example of her work set the stage for the distinctive contributions
to the picture book by Leo Lionni, Ezra Jack Keats, Eric Carle, Ed
Young, Lois Ehlert, and Ellen Stoll Walsh."
In spite of her
success as a children’s book author, Slobodkina continued to produce
and exhibit abstract art, receiving high acclaim
throughout her long and distinguished career. Today, her paintings
and assemblages can be found in numerous public collections,
including the:
-
Corcoran Gallery
of Art
-
Grey Art
Gallery, New York University
-
Heckscher Museum
of Art
-
Hillwood Art
Museum, Long Island University
-
Metropolitan
Museum of Art
-
Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston
-
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
-
Naples Museum of
Art
-
New Britain
Museum of American Art
-
New Jersey State
Museum
-
Philadelphia Museum of Art
-
Samuel P. Harn
Art Museum, University of Florida
-
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
-
Sheldon Museum
of Art
-
Smithsonian
American Art Museum
-
Whitney Museum
of American Art
In the last years of
her life, Slobodkina displayed little sign of slowing down.
At age 90, she
designed a mini-museum in Glen Head, Long Island as a place where guests can view
more than 500 works of art, handmade dolls and jewelry, and the complete collection of
Slobodkina's children's books, including some
original illustrations.
Functioning
both as a museum and a reading room for children, the charitable
Slobodkina Foundation actively engages in educational programming
while preserving the legacy of Esphyr
Slobodkina's prolific, multifaceted career.
Read Esphyr Slobodkina's full story in Rediscovering Slobodkina:
A Pioneer of American Abstraction, published by Hudson Hills
Press.
Purchase the book.
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