Finding original art by prominent illustrators at affordable prices is not always easy, but this month, works by Eric Carle, Mo Willems, Leo and Diane Dillon, and over a dozen other picture book artists are up for bid at the Blue Horse Charity Auction. The artwork can be seen on an eBay Web page linked to the auction’s Web site, and bidding is currently underway. The profits will fund arts education in public schools nationwide through grant programs run by the NEA Foundation.
All the works are portraits of horses, a theme that celebrates the publication of Eric Carle’s newest book, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse (Philomel). In it, Carle pays homage to the pre-World War I German Expressionist painter Franz Marc and his powerful, vividly colored portraits of horses. At the same time, the book memorializes an art teacher who changed Carle’s life.
Carle has often told the story of the debt he owes to Herr Kraus. Though he was born in upstate New York, Carle spent most of his youth in pre-war Germany, where the Nazi regime had banned the display and study of modern painters; "degenerate artists,” they called them. But Herr Kraus, Carle’s art teacher, sensed a special gift in his young student. "I like the freedom and the looseness in the way you draw and paint," he told Carle, and he invited the young man to his home, where he showed him, at great personal risk, a collection of works by the forbidden artists.
"When Herr Krauss secretly showed me the reproductions of paintings of modern and expressionistic art," Carle said in an email interview, "it was art unlike anything I had been exposed to before. This experience at first shocked me and I found it unsettling."
After the war ended, Carle entered art school. The school building was half-ruined and there was no heat, but there Carle and his friends rediscovered the work of the painters Herr Kraus had shown him.. "There was a great sense of excitement about so much art that was unknown altogether to us," Carle said. "From then on I had an intense interest in all art forms and integrated what I learned into my own art and designs and illustrations." Especially significant was his encounter with the work Marc, whose paintings of horses in pure shades of red, yellow, and blue fascinated Carle. He treasured Marc’s "unconventional use of color and the freedom and beauty of his work."
The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse expresses Carle’s gratitude for the discovery of this freedom. On the first page, an artist reaches out with his paintbrush and spreads a bold splash of blue on a large canvas. “I am an artist,” he announces, “and I paint…a blue horse and…a red crocodile, and…a yellow cow…” Each of the animal portraits fills a double-page spread, and each one is painted some wildly exuberant and unexpected color. The final spread, “a polka-dotted donkey,” is pounced all over with colors from subdued lilac to sunny orange. “I am a good artist,” the protagonist says with quiet satisfaction.
"I think after the age of five,” Carle said, “we lose a kind of creative freedom, and openness. This book is really for all artists of any age, and it is saying there is no wrong color and that you don't have to stay within the lines."
Carle created the animal images first, then showed the sheaf of paintings to Ann Beneduce, his long-time editor at Philomel. "Is this a book?" he asked her.
"It was the quickest book we’ve ever done," said Beneduce in a phone interview. "It was clear that children would love these paintings just as they were and would want to imitate them. Eric is always thinking about the children as he works—that’s what makes him so extraordinary. ‘Yes, these are beautiful,’ I told him. He also showed me the Franz Marc paintings. That connection was clear. As we worked back and forth he got the idea that there needed to be a child in the book. It was very spontaneous."
The auction idea was Penguin’s; they contacted Anita Merina at NEA’s Read Across America. Merina, in turn, got in touch with the NEA Foundation, whose grants for arts education made it the perfect choice to receive funds generated by the auction. (Merina also had the enviable task of calling the artists to invite them to participate.)
Harriet Sanford, president and CEO of the NEA Foundation, responded enthusiastically about the gift in an email interview. "This is the first time that we have been offered the opportunity to have the sale of art to fund art education," she said, "and I think it’s a great match. This is by far the most creative funding source we’ve enjoyed. All the donations will be used to provide students with access to quality arts education. And the pieces are simply beautiful."
The second auction ends on November 10 (an earlier round ended in October); the third round begins November 14, running until November 24. Like all eBay auctions, the changing bids can be tracked on the site. The higher the price a work attracts, the greater the opportunity to fund arts in the classroom—and that means that more children drawing and painting with the freedom championed by Eric Carle.
