The great Czech graphic designer and visual artist Květa Pacovská died on Monday, February 6, at the age of 94. She earned worldwide recognition through her tremendous commitment to the field of children's books. Her contagious and immediately intelligible drawings were famous for abolishing the filter of language and preserving the sole pleasure of the eye.
Editor Brigitte Morel published her work in France from 1994 onward. Morel recalled the tall lady with the long, slender figure, the parchment-like skin, the mobile, lively and mischievous gaze and a seemingly immortal figure whose flame did not diminish with age: "Květa Pacovská has gone. The little lady in black managed to be sunny, displaying maximum contrast, like her red and black books, a black that clatters like polished shoes. She wanted her children's books to be like museums for the little ones. You had to install them, and spread them out in space like paper architecture. The text, when there was any, had to rhyme and be in tune, like a little song."
Born in Prague on July 28, 1928, to an opera singer father and a language teacher mother, the young Květa already practiced all forms of creation including drawings, volumes, collages and colors, much like a culinary apprenticeship. She owed this commitment to her grandmother, who pointed out to her the beauty in everyday life through the sole power of observation. It had been "a priceless gift," she often confided.
World War II darkened her Eden: Her father died and the young girl interrupted her studies. She resumed her work in 1945 by enrolling in a graphic design school. Two years later, she joined the School of Applied Arts in Prague, where the teaching staff included Cubist avant-garde leader Emil Filla (1882-1953). Pacovská chose to study monumental painting, but the Soviet government's closure of the country's borders in 1948 extinguished dreams and darkened the horizon.
Free from academic constraints
Considered "degenerate," the work of Kasimir Malevitch, Alexander Rodchenko and the constructivists was censored. Pacovská began to sculpt secretly at home. She married the artist-designer Milan Grygar when she graduated in 1952. As soon as her children were born, in the mid-1950s, she began to work on images for young children to awaken the immediate beauty that had captivated her from a very young age, and also to work in a field that escaped censorship. She quickly went beyond commissions and began to conceive of the book as a global and coherent project, much like a monument.
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