Culture. Eat it
23 July 2018
I always thought that books were not ready to tell the history of art to children, when in the bookshelves of the Frida Kalho exhibition in Milan I got my eye on this cerulean book that immediately enlightened me. It’s dedicated to my favorite painter, Gustav Klimt.
The book is part of a beautiful series dedicated to “The Masters of Art”: great artists for small readers (7 and 11 years), a series of 12 volumes published by 24 hours Culture.
The story is told by the first person:
I am Gustav Klimt, a Viennese boy, I was born on 14 July 1862 in Austria.
The painter’s voice guides young readers in his life, starting from the origins to his greatest successes. To do this he needs to talk about his family, his passions, the historical time he has inhabited, the obstacles encountered and the goals he achieved.
I want to paint love, nature, and beautiful ladies like princesses. I want to create a magical world of precious doodles, a thousand colored stones and pure gold backgrounds.
One art merges with the other: the narration is in fact interspersed with illustrations and photographic glimpses, the only ones able to give back to the reader the beauty achieved by Klimt’s works.
The illustrations are edited by the art director Massimiliano Aurelio and by the Gormiti designer Gianfranco Enrietto, giving the story “lightness”, to quote Calvino, which it deserves.
The language is simple, a read that are good for children and for parents who wish to introduce art to children through its important protagonists.
If you like it so much, you do not miss the ones dedicated to Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Kandinsky, Pollock, Gauguin, Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto, Rousseau, Chagall and Van Gogh.
An idea that overcomes the clichés of the difficulty of telling Art and its meanings, of those that make you want to travel.
Today is the turn of Gustav Klimt’s Vienna. Who will be next?
Reading time
one night with Gustav Klimt
Ph. Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture
Photos: Sara Cartelli
Author
Bio:
She is an art historian, optimistic and empathic by nature. She imagines a world where sow kindness enjoying the little things. She's in love with stories since she was a child, for the Eat Culture she eats books and arts. Per aspera ad astra says the only tattoo on her skin. It reminds her that the road that leads to her dreams is not always easy but that she never gives up.