Tomi Ungerer's Blog

 

2020 has been a year unlike any other – full of challenges and complications. One of the most difficult things is not being able to see so many of our friends and family and so this year we think that sending a physical Christmas card to those we love and miss feels more important than ever.


Therefore we are very excited to offer you a colouring in Christmas card designed by Tomi – you can download it, print it at home, colour it in, fold it in half, and mail it to someone you’re thinking of. We hope you enjoy making these cards your own and would love to see your creations, take photos and tag them on Instagram with #tomiforchristmas
 


Here’s the link to the lovely card in three languages and with two greetings just choose which version you prefer to print off at home.


bit.ly/tomiforchristmas

The post Special Edition Paper Colouring in Christmas Cards Launched by Diogenes and Tomi Ungerer first appeared on Tomi Ungerer.

Hello


 


Building something new and fun often takes a team effort. As in Tomi’s storybooks, we are looking to do work together on this.


 


We are planning a refresh to Tomi’s website. We will begin by making some changes to the News page. Over time we are aiming to do much more – like many people, we find ourselves with a site full of content that we are proud of but which needs to be updated to keep up with technological advances such as the general move to mobile viewing.


 


If you can spare a couple of minutes – we’d love you to answer just a few questions:


 


https://bit.ly/newtomiweb


 


Thanks to all of you for your support, for the lovely community spirit and for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us, we really appreciate them.


 


Let’s keep on trucking, as Tomi always used to say!


 


Aria Ungerer


 


 








 

Hello

We are happy to share with you some Tomi bits and bobs from around the wonderful internet with images,  online events and different media that you can listen and engage with during these days and nights at home. We hope that you will enjoy them share them with friends, all of our social channels will be updating along the way too.

Here’s our first three for now – more soon

Colouring – Tomi’s Icelandic publisher AM Forlag have kindly shared these lovely colouring in sheets based on pages from the Moon Man

AM Forlag colouring sheets

 

Virtual museum and exhibition – As you may know the Musee Tomi Ungerer in Strasbourg is closed to public visits now but an extensive online archive exists too.

Tomi Ungerer Museum archive

 

Interviews on the radio – listen again to the wonderful Augustin Trapenard with Tomi back in March 2018 on his Boomerang programme

French Inter radio interview 

 

 

 

It’s been 7 long years since Tomi’s last picture book (Fog Island 2012) and so it’s a special moment when the publication of a new children’s book comes along.

Non-Stop has a story so rivetting for today’s world while it shows that special dedication to design and layout that one has come to expect from Tomi.

The narrative unfolds within the perilous journey of a character called Vasco – we follow him on a trip like no other, there will be many twists and turns along the way for sure and of course a special ending…

The book is out now in German from Diogenes Verlag. In French from Ecole de Loisirs and soon out in English from Phaidon.

Here’s what some have been saying since its release

Ein großes Glück, dass Tomi Ungerer, der heuer im Februar starb, immer Kind geblieben war – Kurier, Wien. – We are fortunate that Tomi Ungerer  had always stayed a child.

Nun liegt sein letztes Bilderbuch vor und gibt uns noch mal die Chance, seine Kreativität und seine Weisheit zu bewundern – Kulturfalter, Halle. – Now his last picture book has been published and once more gives us the opportunity to admire his creativity and his wisdom.

And finally here’s a beautiful review about how resonant this story is for today’s world in Le Point.

 

October 15 – Launched during the Frankfurt Buchmesse at Le Petite Royal restaurant in the City , Christophe Amend, the magazine’s editor hosted a special event and friendly Q and A with Aria Ungerer on the Zeit Magazine edition devoted to Tomi Ungerer and his work.

The informal and stand up conversation covered questions over working with Tomi, his output in the last year of his life and his particular form of parenting and habits when taking transatlantic flights (read making and flying paper planes in a plane!).

Much of the issue was dedicated to a whole section of unpublished work under the title of “Pun Fun” and the intricate reimagining of Flix for the animation series in preparation currently.

Unlock books was the title of the whole evening’s event with a focus on writing and held of the just before the opening the largest book fair in the world that takes place every October in Frankfurt.

Here’s the online link to the issue for those of you who may have a subscription.

https://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/2019/43/aria-ungerer-tomi-ungerer-tochter-literatur 

 

[See image gallery at www.tomiungerer.com]

October, Paris, 2019

In conjunction with Fiacparis and the Galerie Vallios Tomi’s sculpture piece “An Army of shovels” (with over 100 objects) was on show in the Jardin De Tuileries as part of the Hors Les Murs exhibition series that took place this autumn.

For over thirty years, both as an artist and as a farmer, Tomi worked with shovels. As a farmer, the shovel served as a direct line of communication with the earth.

As an artist, each could be gifted with a new and unique character and transformed into an artwork. Digging into his childhood memories of WWII, with Army of Shovels Tomi Ungerer created a mobile army made of identical, purchased shovels; the individual subsumed by the mass. Placed in military configuration, they seem to invade the Tuileries.

[See image gallery at www.tomiungerer.com]

 

In the fall 2019 issue of the Virginia quarterly review, you’ll find the marvelous Lisa Brown, illustrator and writer publishing her fascinating part-mini biography, part personal memoir and essay on writing.

It contains written and sketched recollections from snippets of Tomi’s life and work and how (she calls herself as an acolyte of Tomi) pictures them before her, opening up with all the diverse reactions and how they all make her feel today.

Alongside this chronicle of Tomi’s hectic life she discusses the attitudes towards any author having to behave like good little children too, and what that means for art writing, stories and of course publishing today.

She narrates how that affected some parts of Tomi work and life, especially in the late sixties and seventies in America.

But for now the best is to read this featured article yourself. Tap the link below to see the complete  article over on the VQR website.

 

 

The Beastly Boy – Tomi Ungerer and the art of provocation

Strasbourg, France. July 2019

A vibrant summer of events are now taking place centred around Tomi’s work and private collections in Strasbourg, with two shows currently on view and also being honoured as part of a special “slow-life” illumination project called Hortus that features images from Jean De Lune along the riverside buildings projected each evening, from July til September this year.

The two exhibitions now running in the city are firstly Tomi Ungerer the European til  November 3rd at the Tomi Ungerer museum.

Tomi had a deep attached to the idea of Europe, with the values of justice, tolerance and humanism represented by the city being dear to his heart. Alongside this was the particular importance of the Alsace region in the creation of post-war European, ideas he also portrayed with a critical vision of the subject, particularly when targeting Europe’s weaknesses. The original illustrations of the book Europolitain (1998) will be presented here for the first time in their entirety. They are put in context by a set of Tomi Ungerer drawings against violence and totalitarianism from the 1960s to the present day.

The second show is held in CEAAC in conjunction with the Tomi Ungerer Museum and follows a unique theme and form as it collects and shows for the first time the wonderfully eclectic collection of toys of Tomi Ungerer.

Tomi was a passionate toy collector. The first toy in his collection, a small mechanical boat, was given to him in 1960 in New York. For nearly forty years, he grew a collection of a few thousand objects, some of which were donated to the Museums of the City of Strasbourg. Some of them are on permanent display at the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Tomi Ungerer Museum – International Illustration Centre. The exhibition focuses on one of the major themes of his collection:  transport. About a hundred objects are on display, including vehicles of all kinds, from cars, planes, boats, railways, trucks and other more unusual forms.

Photo credit – Klaus Stober

In addition, CEAAC presents six contemporary artists for whom play and toys are major themes in their work. Among the artists who applied for this exhibition project, six were selected whose proposals provided a poetic and critical echo to the various cars, trucks and trains from Tomi Ungerer’s toy collection. The selected artists are Daniel Depoutot, Morgane Kabiry, Joseph Kieffer, Min Jisook, Patrick Nardin et Simon Nicaise.

More detailed information can be downloaded here

It’s been just over three months since Tomi left us – an intense time for all and a period of reflection and memories.

You may have noticed things here have paused for a moment online,  but now we’re back and looking forward to all that comes next.

In a very Tomi way of working things have actually never stopped. Events, shows and book publications have continued on as ever in life. 

We have also been considering some things for this site and we hope to share some of those ideas with you soon. 

In the meantime,  here are the spring highlights that will bring us right up to the galleries weekend in Paris and the screening of two films on Tomi  L’Esprit Frappeur by Brad Bernstein and Jean De la Lune by Stephan Schesch on the the Sunday the 19th of May days before the final week of the show “Overdose”  

Highlights

The Centre Cultural Irlandais Exhibition En Attendant 16/03 – 05/07

Running since March 16th this year a special exhibition covering mostly his collage work. Tomi began working on this show mid-July of last year, an exceptional event that is reviewed in full here.   

In addition, we have Sophie Gorman and Aria Ungerer in conversation on the show below

The Galerie Vallios Show “Overdose” 17/04 -25/05

Never known for just one genre of art – Tomi’s latest show explores the diverse and challenging lines of his work through drawings, sculptures, writing and collages reviewed here in L’Humanite 

And here’s a quick tater walk through the Vallois for you, before you get time to go visit this weekend…

A new children’s book is very nearly here…

Finally, it’s been 6 years since Tomi’s last children’s story – Fog Island. This month sees the publication of a brand new book from Tomi – a tale of pure drama, pathos and humanity that follows the breathtaking adventure of Vasco pictured here…

 

 

 

Tomi Ungerer was a children’s book creator, an illustrator, a writer, a graphic designer, an architect, a satirist, a sculptor and the maker of the most idiosyncratic collages. He was a father and a farmer, a joker and a teacher, a fighter for sexual freedom and a realist. And, with his unstoppable and most demanding self-drive, he was all of these things simultaneously.

Ungerer published over 140 books, which have been translated into 30 languages. They range from his globally acclaimed children’s stories to illustrated memoirs to controversial volumes of biting social satire and adult themes. 

Central to the success of his children’s writing was the fact that Ungerer did not write down to children, he wanted to challenge them, to frighten them, to delight them. And children all over the world continue to adore these darkly brilliant tales. He was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1998 and, in 2003, Ungerer was appointed as the first Ambassador for Childhood and Education by the Council of Europe. 

Ungerer was born in Strasbourg, in Alsace, in November 1931, the youngest of four children. His father died when he was three years old, but it was his mother who contributed most to his deep-seated resolve and determination. She raised Ungerer and his siblings never to look away, always to stand strong and to know the importance of experiencing fear and not letting it destroy you.

The Strasbourg of Ungerer’s childhood was a city uprooted by war and Ungerer recognised the part of him that bridged this French-German divide, describing himself as being without borders. 

When the Nazis annexed Strasbourg, he witnessed firsthand his mother standing up to the German soldiers, refusing to relent. And this deeply affected Ungerer. When he was nine, he started drawing cartoons mocking Hitler — drawings which might have put his family in danger had they been found. But Ungerer never shied away from danger when he felt he had a purpose and a duty.

Ungerer also possessed an unshakeable belief in loyalty. His friendships stretched decades and spanned generations (and countries). He was also loyal to places, his bond with Strasbourg never faltering no matter where he lived. And the city loved him back, proudly erecting a museum in honour of their great artist in 2007, the first living artist to have a public museum dedicated to their life and work in France. For his 85th birthday in 2016, 85 artists from all over the world created works in his honour that were exhibited in the museum.

A young Ungerer did not start out wanting to be an illustrator or to write books. He instead harboured early dreams of becoming a mineralogist or geologist, he was connected to the land. But once he started drawing, he never stopped and his future was unavoidable.

Ungerer moved to America in 1955, lured by jazz music and the creative freedom that suggested. He arrived in New York as a gauche 20-something with no plans and just $60 in his pockets. He described the world he found as “a land of specialists and savages”.

But Ungerer’s New York life quickly took off. He was embraced into the avant garde creative circles and soon started publishing illustrations in high profile magazines. A turning point came when he connected with the publisher Ursula Nordstrom. Nordstrom had vision and she crucially believed in Ungerer, she nurtured Ungerer’s obvious talent.

The callow youth was soon replaced by a literary success. Ungerer produced key children’s books that quickly garnered international acclaim including The Mellops’ series and The Three Robbers. He was mixing with the artistic elite such as Tom Wolfe, Stanley Kubrick, Philip Glass and collaborating with the likes of Gunther Grass. He was even made the food editor for Playboy and driving around Manhattan in a cream Bentley. But behind the social whirlwind was an impossibly disciplined creative, Ungerer lived to work.

Everything changed in 1967. Ungerer was so incensed by the American participation in the Vietnam War that he produced a series of incendiary posters. They were initially a commission for Columbia University, but the university rejected a number of them due to the uncensored provocation of their content. These posters soon became cult classics. But American society and, more importantly, American politicians were outraged. 

Ungerer reacted to this turning tide against him in a typical manner and, in 1971, took himself and his young wife Yvonne to a very remote farm in Nova Scotia. He disappeared into the wilderness at the peak of his fame. But his mark was already made. And Ungerer never stopped writing and creating, he could not have, the work drove him. It was of course part of his subversive spirit that he left after the publication of Fornicon, his most famous work of erotic satire and one that is still legally banned in England, a fact that Ungerer was always proud of.

In 1973, he published No Kiss for Mother, a very different children’s book about the naughty kitten Piper Paw, and a response to his friend Maurice Sendak’s Kiss for Mother. Tender and provocative at the same time, it was his most autobiographical book, exposing his relationship with his own mother  – but in a uniquely Ungerer fashion.

Nova Scotia was never fully home for the Ungerers, so they took another surprising move and upped roots to go to the very south west of Ireland, buying a farm perched high on the cliffs of West Cork. Their new land contained the ruins of three castles and Ungerer somehow found his true home, where the dramatic waves deafeningly crashing against the rocks provided the perfect soundtrack for his furious creativity.

Against the odds, this eccentric Alsatian and his exotic American wife carved an indelible place for themselves in this remote Irish landscape. Local farmers even found themselves collecting discarded dolls to give to the artist living on the cliffs. For Ungerer could always see the interesting in the rejected. He collected obsessively and his studio was a cluttered cabinet of curiosities.

This home at the end of the world, or at least Ireland, also nurtured not only Ungerer’s work but also his family and it was here that his three children, Aria, Pascal and Lukas, were raised, amidst sheep, horses and endless hares.

In October 2018, Ungerer’s contribution to French culture was recognised when he was promoted to Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur by the president of France and on behalf of its people. This rare honour places Ungerer in the cohort of such other luminaries as Balzac, Charles Aznavour and Charlie Chaplin.

Ungerer refused to conform and fought many battles, most of them were political ones. He created political posters and satirical cartoons that viciously attacked the violent and depraved parts of modern life. In the 1990s, he campaigned hugely for AIDS, giving away thousands of free condoms featuring his drawings. More recently, he worked with the French ministry for education, and campaigned hugely for AIDS, giving away thousands of free condoms featuring his drawings.

What linked all of his work, from children’s books to political posters to his cartoons and his mechanised sexual satire, was his interest in representing the “underside of things, the repressed, the overlooked, the sidelined”.

Ungerer died peacefully in his sleep with a book (of Nabokov letters) beside him. He was working on a new collection of short stories and he has two major exhibitions opening in Paris in March (and April). Ungerer’s imagination never slept.

By Sophie Gorman.

Video Courtesy of Rick Cikowski and Brad Bermstein