Tengs
– här föddes "Pinoccios pappa" Gustaf
Tenggren
Tenggren, Gustaf,
1896-1970, tecknare, målare, grafiker. T. illustrerade
bl.a. julpublikationen Bland tomtar och troll 1917-26. Han
emigrerade 1920 till USA och fick där framgång
som tidningstecknare och barnboksillustratör. Åren
1936-39, när bl.a. Snövit och Pinocchio producerades,
var han ateljéchef vid Walt Disney Studios. Stor popularitet
vann T. genom sin medverkan i förlagsserien Golden Books,
i Sverige FIB:s Gyllene Böcker.
Källa
Nationalencyklopedin
Gustaf
Tenggren föddes den 3 november 1896 i Magra.
Konstnären Gustaf Tenggren fick sin tidiga skolning
i Sverige och det här han präglas vad gäller
teknik, motiv och myter. Redan som tjugoåring efterträdde
han John Bauer som illustratör för Bland tomtar
och troll, en tidskrift för barn som kom ut varje år.
I denna illustrerade han kända författares berättelser
fån 1917 ända fram till 1926. De sista sex åren
från Amerika.
Under denna period illustrerade han också en berättelsebok
av HC Andersen för ett danskt förlag.
År
1920 emmigrerade Gustaf Tenggren till USA, 24 år gammal.
Först kom han till Cleveland och två år senare
flyttade han till New York. Vid tiden för 1923 arbetade
han hårt för att komma in på den amerikanska
barnboksmarknaden.
By 1923
he was hard at work breaking into the American children's
book market - the heyday of the grand illustrated books of
Rackham and Nielsen (a kindred artistic spirit) having passed
before his time.
In 1923 in America, his work appeared in Wonder Book and Tanglewood
Tales@, D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, A Boy of the Lost Crusade,
The Christ Story for Boys and Girls, and Heidi, with a Grimm's
Marchenschatz being published in Germany.
1924 through 1928 saw a steady stream of books: The Good Dog
Book, The Red Fairy Book, Peggy's Playhouses, A Dog of Flanders,
a "1925 Fairy Tale Calendar" for Beck Engraving
Co, a dust jacket for a novel Quest, Small Fry and the Winged
Horse, (see the Viking illustration at left), Juan and Juanita@,and
Dickey Byrd. His illustrations appeared in Good Housekeeping
in a column "by ELAINE, Entertainment Editor" and
in advertisements for the International Silver Co, Heisey's
Glassware, Elgin Watches (the first illustration above - from
1926), and he even provided illustrations for some few stories.
1932 was a banner year for Tenggren. He illustrated one of
my favorites among his books, Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind,
which only had two color plates but they were gorgeous (as
you can tell from the sample to the right). Both this title
and The Ring of the Niblung featured his pen work, which we
also like. Here's why.
His most atypical work to date occurred in a non-fiction children's
book entitled How They Carried the Goods, also in 1932, in
which he was called upon to paint pictures of many things,
including an airplane. A few other books follow to 1936, one
unique one being 1933's oddly named Seldom and the Golden
Cheese@, with more pen and ink work. About this time he also
painted the dust wrapper for a famous Pearl S. Buck novel,
The Good Earth.
His career was about to take a dramatic turn and his style
was never to be the same. In 1936, Tenggren went to work for
Walt Disney...
You can see his work throughout Snow White and in many of
the richly detailed urban backgrounds of Pinocchio, for which
his Scandinavian heritage and experience were obviously drawn
upon. His Arthur Rackham-esque trees featured prominently
in the Snow White forest scenes as can be seen at left - taken
from the 1938 Grosset & Dunlap Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs.
In his wonderful Before the Animation Begins - The Art and
Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists, John Canemaker
devotes ten pages to Tenggren and his art. It's a must-have
book in our opinion. Available from Bud Plant Comic Art.
As significant and as powerful as his Disney work turned out
to be, he emerged from the experience in 1939 with a very
different approach to art. It was still rich and colorful,
but the inspirations of Bauer and Rackham and Nielsen were
jettisoned for, well, you decide...
Not four years after his elegant contributions to Disney,
Tenggren explodes back upon the book market with ... The Poky
Little Puppy, in a new, simplified, flatter style that fails
to satisfy me the way his romantic earlier work was able to.
His output, though, increased dramatically, as did the marketability
of his name. The Forties and Fifties saw an endless stream
of Tenggren books: The Tenggren Tell-It-Again Book, The Tenggren
Story Book, Tenggren's Cowboys and Indians, Tenggren's Thumbelina,
Tenggren's Jack and the Beanstalk, Tenggren's Mother Goose,
etc., as well as a mob of Little Golden Books from The Biggest
Bear to Little Black Sambo.
King Arthur, at left, is his last book - from 1961. He died
in 1970 leaving behind a half century of art that continues
to amaze and entertain to this day.
Källa
http://www.bpib.com/tenggren.htm
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