Felicitas Kuhn

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Felicitas Kuhn , also Felicita Kuhn , Felicitas Kuhn-Klappschy , Felicitas Kuhnová (born January 3, 1926 in Vienna ) is an Austrian picture and children's book illustrator. She has illustrated well over 100 children's and fairy tale books, some of them with a print run of over 900,000 copies. There are also quartets, children's playing cards, congratulatory and Christmas cards, advent calendars, money boxes, etc. The artist mainly illustrates in pen and watercolor.

Life

Felicitas Kuhn, daughter of a dentist, graduated from the Higher Graphic Education and Research Institute in Vienna from 1940 to 1947 . The illustrator then worked at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Incidentally, she was one of the artists in the Wunderwelt magazine until 1957 , which appeared from 1948 to 1986. For this magazine she illustrated the fairy tales that ran over two pages.

The artist married the copywriter Helmut Kuhn in 1950. The marriage produced a son. The couple live in Baden .

Critical appraisal

The extensive work of Kuhn is hardly noticed by the "serious" children and youth literature research, although their picture books have been loved by children for decades and are still being reprinted. Most of their picture books are devalued as department store picture books , their style as childish . A hallmark of the department store picture book and the childish style are, among other things, the naive realism and the lavish use of the child schema . Euler said:

The naive realism of the images (bright, unmixed colors; two-dimensional application of paint without shading; clear contours; simple, tension-free image structure) is usually the main reason for the rejection or disregard of the department store picture book by children's book research and criticism because of its assessment as 'kitschy'. How much an elitist and narrow-minded 'art' term is hidden behind it, however, has been shown by several studies that show precisely this mode of representation as the one that best corresponds to the child's image relationship and understanding. Another trick which gives the pictures charm and attractiveness for children is the abundant use of the 'child schema'. Various 'tricks' (in the language of behavioral researchers: key stimuli) make the animals and people shown appear particularly lovely and sweet .

Using the example of the fairy tale picture book Little Brother and Little Sister. A fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm , Hille Dehn and Jens Thiele analyze Felicitas Kuhn's illustration style with regard to visual aesthetics. They come to the following assessment:

A head that is oversized in relation to the body, large eyes set far apart and a snub nose are key stimuli that generate spontaneous sympathy behavior in the viewer [...] The illustrator is not concerned [...] with bringing the painted figure closer to the fairy tale text, but rather about an 'accumulation of visual stimuli' [...] There is neither spatial depth in the picture nor additional picture elements [...] Here the illustrator takes up a basic attitude of romanticism, in which the emotionally experienced moment [...] was idealized. What, in Romanticism, was an expression of a poetic, intimate experience, here congeals into an empty, frozen pictorial scheme, into a romantic template. The specifically romantic basic mood has given way to a 'non-binding, sentimental visual mood'.

Jochen Hering rates Felicta Kuhn's picture book Little Red Riding Hood as follows:

The fairytale picture book shows us a caring mother. Little Red Riding Hood is a neat and well-bred child. We have come to the cliché, a template for mother and child. In the forest the wolf, he too, a figure who could cause horror, and then a happy ending that is not even one on the picture level, because the pictures ripple in front of them, any actual feeling in the face of disaster is alien to them and none at all Tension is released. Grandmother delighted, Little Red Riding Hood astonished, the hunter has done his job. Speechless pictures! An aesthetic of the nice and cute, in which everything is subordinated to the scheme of an apparent childlike nature.

Anna Zamolska, on the other hand, emphasizes in her examination of the fairy tale watercolors by Felicitas Kuhn their importance for the aesthetic education of children:

In her pictures, Felicitas Kuhn combines the simple shapes of triangles, circles and squares, with which small children first play and which they first learn to recognize. Her style is determined by expressive faces, colors and compositions: She works very strongly with complementary colors, choosing warm and clear shades that result in a harmonious color palette and do not make the overall colorful picture appear overloaded - on the contrary: Your choice of color is already an initial training in aesthetics. Based on their pictures, children get a first glimpse into cultural and historical areas such as costume history and traditions, cultural history and household.

Works (selection)

  • The Windmen, Wels o. J. (1950)
  • Vom Himmel hoch, Wiesbaden undated (1954)
  • Snow White, Erlangen undated (1954)
  • Little Peter at the Christmas Market, Erlangen, no year (1960)
  • In the fairy tale forest, Vienna / Munich / Basel 1962
  • Ten little negroes, Erlangen 1965
  • Over stock and over stone ..., Vienna 1969
  • Schwarzer Peter, Munich: Schmid Spiele undated (1970)
  • The dwarf school, Erlangen 1971
  • My colorful reading book, Vienna 1973
  • The dwarf school, Erlangen o. J. (1979)
  • Little brother and little sister. A fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, Erlangen 1981
  • Sing with me, Erlangen 1982
  • 10 Christmas angels, Erlangen 1983
  • Christmas dreams, Erlangen 1984
  • Santa Claus is coming tomorrow, Erlangen 1985
  • Five little negroes, Erlangen 1990
  • Christmas is coming soon, Erlangen 1991
  • Little Häwelmann, Erlangen 1998
  • A happy ride, Klosterneuburg 2000
  • A fun day, Vienna 2000
  • The busy Easter bunnies, Augsburg 2000
  • Visit to the Wichtelhaus, Klosterneuburg 2001
  • The Windman, Klosterneuburg 2001
  • A happy ride, Klosterneuburg 2004
  • Peter and the Sandman, Klosterneuburg 2004
  • Puck der Waldzwerg, Augsburg 2004
  • What do you want to be, Augsburg 2004
  • Rotkäppchen, Erlangen no year.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Compare the information in the catalog of the German National Library
  2. ↑ Interview with Felicitas Kuhn on KinderundJugendmedien.de
  3. ↑ cf. Berger 1986, p. 1538 ff.
  4. ↑ Euler 1979, p. 189
  5. ↑ Dehn / Thiele 1985, p. 146 ff.
  6. ↑ For naive realism and the child scheme see selected illustrations by Felicitas Kuhn at: and http://www.lambiek.net/artists/k/kuhn_felicitas.htm fuchsundhase
  7. ↑ Hering 2018, p. 137 f
  8. ↑ Zamolska: Kuhn / Mauser-Lichtl: Märchen der Brüder Grimm (2017).

literature

  • Manfred Berger : Beloved and yet frowned upon. The department store picture book. In: Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels 1986, no. 43, pp. 1538–1549.
  • Dehn Hille, Jens Thiele: Assessment and evaluation of picture books. In: Jens Thiele (Ed.): Discover picture books. Studies, materials and recommendations on the critical use of a book genre. Oldenburg 1985, pp. 142-164.
  • Hartmut Euler (Ed.): Department store picture books . In: Hermann K. Ehmer: Aesthetic education and everyday life , Lahn-Gießen 1979, pp. 188–194.
  • Jochen Hering: Children need picture books. Narrative support in daycare and primary school , Seelze 2018
  • International Institute for Youth Literature and Reading Research (Ed.): Lexicon of Austrian children's and youth literature. Volume 2: Illustrators. Vienna 1994, pp. 48-49.
  • Anna Zamolska: Kuhn / Mauser-Lichtl: Fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Review on KinderundJugendmedien.de (2017).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Felicitas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuhn, Felicita; Kuhn-Klappschy, Felicitas; Kuhnová, Felicitas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian picture and children's book illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna