Gustaf Tenggren

Monument to Gustaf Tenggren

Gustaf Tenggren (born November 3, 1896 in Magra ( Västra Götalands län ), † April 6, 1970 in West Southport ) was a Swedish-American draftsman and illustrator who worked temporarily for Walt Disney .

Life

Gustaf Adolf Tenggren was the second youngest of seven children of the couple Aron and Augusta Tenggren. Aron Tenggren was already a painter. In 1898 the family moved to Gårda in Gothenburg ; Gustaf Tenggren, who had a close relationship with his grandfather, however, spent the holidays in Magra and also attended the first two classes of the school there. Soon after moving to Gårda, Aron Tenggren left the family and moved to the United States to look for work. Gustaf Tenggren had to support the family from the age of eleven. Among other things, he worked as an assistant to a lithographer . After his talent for drawing was discovered, he received a scholarship in 1910, which enabled him to train at the Slöjdföreningens skola in Gothenburg. During the day, however, he still had to work. In 1914 he received a second scholarship and moved to the Valands Konstskola. During this time he received his first illustration orders. He also worked as a theater painter in the Stora Teatern and painted portraits.

The publisher Erik Åkerlund hired Gustaf Tenggren in 1918 to succeed John Bauer . Over the next eight years, Tenggren illustrated ten volumes of Bland Tomtar och Troll . His Little Red Riding Hood , a picture from around 1920, shows a curly blonde, whistling Little Red Riding Hood, who with brisk steps crosses a dark forest, of which only the rhizomes and the lower parts of the tree trunks can be seen. The backdrop-like separation of foreground and background is reminiscent of works by John Bauer.

While at Åkerlund, Tenggren married his first wife, Anna Petersson, the sister of his best friend Rudolf Petersson . In 1920 Gustaf and Anna Tenggren embarked for America on the Hellig Olav of the Scandinavian America Line in Copenhagen . They reached New York in August 1920 and traveled on to Cleveland , Ohio . Two sisters of the draftsman already lived there. Two years later they moved to New York. In the next few years, Tenggren became known as an artist and earned a lot of money. In 1929 he moved to the countryside in Dutchess County , in 1930 he married his second wife, who was also from Sweden. Her name was Malin or Mollie Froberg. The couple lived on a farm near Rhinebeck until 1935 before moving back to New York.

In 1935 Gustaf Tenggren received the offer to work as Artistic Director for the film Snow White in the Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles . He occupied himself with this task for almost three years. The design of the interior in the dwarf house goes back to his designs as well as the rooms of the queen and the forest scenes in which the pursued Snow White escapes. Other films in which he was significantly involved were Bambi , The Ugly Duckling , Hiawatha and Fantasia , but above all Pinocchio . In 1939 Tenggren left the Disney studios to devote himself to his own children's book series, The Tenggren books. The first volume in this series was The Tenggren Mother Goose . The books in the series contained popular stories. At the same time, he designed illustrations for children's books from a different source. Tenggren also worked for The Golden Press and produced a number of picture books, including the world's most widely printed picture book, The Poky Little Puppy .

In 1944, the Tenggren couple bought a property at Dogfish Head in Southport , Maine . It was furnished with old Swedish furniture and was Tenggren's home until his death on April 6, 1970. His widow outlived him by twelve years. She left her husband's artistic estate to the University of Minnesota , Minneapolis . It has been integrated into the Kerlan Collection, one of the largest collections of children's literature in the world.

monument

On May 16, 2008, a nine meter high bronze pinocchio figure designed by Jim Dine was erected in Tenggren's honor on Allégatan in Borås , Sweden .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustaf Tenggren in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tenggren's poster for the Snow White film

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The forest in the Art Nouveau illustration ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ biography on gustaftenggren.com
3. ↑ Tenggren's biography on fairyworx.net