The Colourful World Beyond the Seven Hills

Seven Decades of Illustrations to Grimm's Fairy Tales

Don't we all remember the happy or disturbing, enigmatic or dreamy illustrations that were featured in our childhood fairy-tale books? In older and newer editions of the Grimm Brothers' collection "Children's and Household Tales", as well as in the picture books of individual fairy tales, there are images that have left their indelible mark on the memory of successive generations.

The travelling exhibition "The Colourful World Beyond the Seven Hills" has no intention of reviving memories, but rather invites visitors to discover and rediscover an artistically rich tradition of fairy tale illustration in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On display is a selection of around 75 illustrations, which were digitised for the exhibition, from the historical and contemporary book collections of the International Youth Library. The spectrum ranges from post-World-War-II publications, for example by Hans Fischer and Felix Hoffmann, two of Switzerland's most internationally successful illustrators, and canonized fairy-tale editions by such diverse artists as Werner Klemke, Lilo Fromm, Lieselotte Schwarz, and Janosch, to pioneering visual interpretations from the 1990s and early 2000s, for example by Lisbeth Zwerger, Binette Schroeder, and Susanne Janssen.

In this chronological retrospective, which presents seven decades of fairy tale illustration, artistic traditions as well as discontinuities become apparent. A panorama of artistic styles and pictorial conceptions unfolds, embedded in the respective time period. The exhibition is a journey through the picture book illustration of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The exhibition can be shown independently or in conjunction with the travelling exhibition "Happily Ever After. Europe Illustrates the Grimms", which features the European fairy-tale book illustration of the past 20 years.

Content of the exhibition:
75 illustrations on 34 picture panels, 2 introductory text panels, labels with biographical notes of the illustrators

Languages:
Available in German. Further languages upon request


Next venue:
12 January - 17 May 2024:
Worlds of Words - Center of Global Literacies and Literature, College of Education / University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ / USA


Illustrations:
Herbert Leupin, from: "Märchen der Brüder Grimm", NordSüd Verlag
Binette Schroeder, from: "Der Froschkönig", NordSüd Verlag