Tomi Ungerer. Politics, Kids, Advertising, Erotica

By Mark Kaufman

I was out of town for the weekend, so I didn’t get to read the New York Times Sunday edition until last night. To my pleasant surprise there was an article about one of my childhood heroes, Tomi Ungerer in the Arts & Leisure section. Happily Phaidon Press has purchased the English language rights to Mr. Ungerer’s childrens books and will rerelease them in the U.S. My absolute favorite book when I was a boy was Beastly Boys and Beastly Girls, a compliation of limericks and poems, which was my first introduction to Tomi’s work, and also to the work of Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein and others. Subsequently I was attracted to the prolific Mr. Ungerers political, advertising and erotic work, truly intelligent and clever work infused with a loose and fun drawing style. Like I said one he is of my all time favorites, and a huge influence on me and countless others, but other than the aforementioned Beastly Boys/Ghastly Girls book, which only featured Tomi’s drawings, I have not read or seen much of his work for children, because much of it is out of print. The only time I have seen the tiles was during ebay searches when looking for original Tomi art, of which I was able to procure a couple of small thumbnail sketches. So I am glad that Phaidon will be releasing the books in the US, so I can get a good long look at it, and so that many people, kids, illustrators and designers alike can reacquaint themselves with one of the true illustration giants of our time. I am so excited!