Today's vintage children's book is The Happy Owls by Swiss Artist, Celestino Piatti. If I had to described Piatti's work I would have to use many terms like balanced compositions, great use of color, creative designs, good line work, appealing, etc., etc.,... just simply great illustrations. LOVE HIS WORK.
Piatti was a talented and prolific artist who wore many hats. Besides being a Graphic Artist, Illustrator, Painter, Book Designer and Poster Artist, he also did lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, linocuts, worked with ceramics and sculpted.
Owls were used repeatedly in Piatti's work. Of the owl Piatti once said "I have never been able to get this creature out of my mind, especially it's eyes. Nearly every picture I draw has an eye somewhere."
Piatti frequently used the four elements of water, earth, air and fire in his work. To represent these elements he used the fish, tiger, owl and sun.
The Happy Owls is a simple story with a strong moral. It's about seeing beauty in the world around us and being thankful for what we have. Perhaps this book wasn't written for children only?
Celestino Piatti lived from 1922-2007. In the 30 years that he worked for the DTV (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag) in Munich, he designed almost all of their book covers, over 6300 designs in all! Of the 500 posters Piatti did, 30 won "Best Swiss Poster of the Year." A much smaller part of his work, Piatti did nine children's books.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I am taking a winter break and will be back on January 2nd.
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