Květa Pacovská

Biography

In 1993 the Golden Letter, the prize awarded at an international competition for the most beautiful books in the world, went to “Papier Paradise”. Květa Pacovská made it as a tribute to Kurt Schwitters, the German artist who assembled works from scraps of paper.

She was born in Prague on 28 July 1928. In 1947 she graduated from the State School of Graphic Arts in her native city, then continued her studies at the University of Arts and Crafts. Her teacher there was Professor Emil Filla, under whom she studied monumental painting, that is, murals and mosaics for public buildings. She finished her studies in 1952 and at once took up the illustration of children’s books and magazines. Her husband and partner in life was the graphic artist Milan Grygar, and both of their sons also went into the arts: Štěpán works as a photographer, Ondřej as a graphic artist.

She began drawing picture books for her own children, as is generally believed, in 1961; this date is hard to verify, and I give it with a reservation. By then she had been working as a graphic artist for many years and had taken part in exhibitions.

It was her own books that made her known. Her drawings are built on simple geometric forms and pure colours, and the colour she used most often was red. She regarded black and white as full colours, because they give the greatest contrast, and contrast, in her words, is the greatest beauty. She compared colour to music: each tone is beautiful by itself, and in combinations they produce harmony, dissonance, symphonies and books for children. Typography matters in her books as well: she treated letters and the page as material for experiment. Among her works are the counting books “One, Five, Many” (1990) and “Number Circus”, “Midnight Play” (1994), “Flying” (1995), “The Little Flower King” (2007) and “The Sun Is Yellow” (2012); she also illustrated Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” (2005). Pacovská’s books have appeared in more than twenty countries, in Europe, the United States, Japan and China, in Czech, Slovak, German, English, Japanese, French and many other languages. There are also electronic editions of “Midnight Play” and “Alphabet” on CD-ROM.

In 1992 the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) awarded her the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustration, the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children’s books. In 1992–1994 she was a visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, in 1998 she taught at Kingston University in Britain, and in 1999 that university made her an honorary Doctor of Design. In 1995–1997 a garden was built at the Chihiro Art Museum in Azumino, Japan, to her design.

Květa Pacovská died in Prague on 6 February 2023. She was posthumously awarded the Medal of Merit, First Class.