How I Came to Berlin
Product Code: 9781843519522
Rating: Be the first to write a review
Weight: 450.0g
Product Condition: New
How I Came to Berlin
An Artist's Journey from Belfast and the London Blitz to a Cold-War City
by Elizabeth Shaw
Edited by Sabine Egger & Fergal Lenehan
A deeply moving memoir from one of Ireland’s great forgotten artists, now in English for the first time.
Elizabeth Shaw, originally from Belfast, became one of the most beloved children’s authors and illustrators in East Germany, producing 23 books that remained in print after her death in 1992, and yet she is still all but unknown in Ireland.
Born in Belfast in 1920, Shaw was a life-long outsider, sheltered from the poverty and violence of the city at the liberal Royal Academy. During her time at the Chelsea School of Art, she began to illustrate cartoons inspired by the social and political struggles of her time.
In 1939, she was called up to the war effort and worked in the London telephone exchange. Having contributed to the London left-wing magazines Our Time and Lilliput, she exhibited works in 1943 at the Artists’ International Association in London.
She married émigré artist and communist René Graetz in 1944 and decided to help build a better, socialist Germany. She worked as a caricaturist for print media, including the newspaper of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party, before going on to write enormously successful books for children, making her a household name across Germany, as well as illustrating 24 children’s books by other authors, such as Bertolt Brecht and Mark Twain, and 32 books for adults.
By times elusive, moving and deeply revealing, this is a finely tuned memoir by one of Ireland’s great forgotten artists – now illustrated with many never-before-published illustrations, and with an insightful and enlightening afterword by Sabine Egger and Fergal Lenehan, which delves into the under-explored aspects of Shaw’s relationship to Communism and the GDR.
An Artist's Journey from Belfast and the London Blitz to a Cold-War City
by Elizabeth Shaw
Edited by Sabine Egger & Fergal Lenehan
A deeply moving memoir from one of Ireland’s great forgotten artists, now in English for the first time.
Elizabeth Shaw, originally from Belfast, became one of the most beloved children’s authors and illustrators in East Germany, producing 23 books that remained in print after her death in 1992, and yet she is still all but unknown in Ireland.
Born in Belfast in 1920, Shaw was a life-long outsider, sheltered from the poverty and violence of the city at the liberal Royal Academy. During her time at the Chelsea School of Art, she began to illustrate cartoons inspired by the social and political struggles of her time.
In 1939, she was called up to the war effort and worked in the London telephone exchange. Having contributed to the London left-wing magazines Our Time and Lilliput, she exhibited works in 1943 at the Artists’ International Association in London.
She married émigré artist and communist René Graetz in 1944 and decided to help build a better, socialist Germany. She worked as a caricaturist for print media, including the newspaper of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party, before going on to write enormously successful books for children, making her a household name across Germany, as well as illustrating 24 children’s books by other authors, such as Bertolt Brecht and Mark Twain, and 32 books for adults.
By times elusive, moving and deeply revealing, this is a finely tuned memoir by one of Ireland’s great forgotten artists – now illustrated with many never-before-published illustrations, and with an insightful and enlightening afterword by Sabine Egger and Fergal Lenehan, which delves into the under-explored aspects of Shaw’s relationship to Communism and the GDR.
€16.99 inc. tax
Customer Reviews
No Reviews Posted Yet - be the first! (write review)