The Leo Lionni Art Show in Kyoto

Last month, I attended an art show featuring Leo Lionni in Kyoto. He is famous one story called Swimmy in Japan because the story has been in a Japanese textbook for the second grade. I've known him because of the textbook, but I prefer his other picture books.

This exhibit was very interesting because it traced his career step by step. Although he changed his professions many times, he was always connected to art. He worked as an illustrator in the U.S. Then, he became a graphic designer and later an art director.

Since he was a young boy, he'd been learning drawing, so he was good at painting as well.

"Little Blue and Little Yellow" was his very first picture book.

I was impressed by his drawings. He was really good at describing imaginary objects.

He started creating picture books after retiring. He worked in the States for a long time, but he moved back to Italy.

The picture below shows the book "Swimmy".

I really enjoyed looking around at his original pieces from his picture books. Some of them are created using stamps.

The piece in the picture below was made with some Japanese paper called washi and Italian paper.

The next piece was created with some stamps, origami, washi, and some paper printed unique patterns. I love this idea and I'd love to create my own picture book for my grandson some day. I also thought it would be even more fun to create a picture book together with him. I'd love to do it!

The piece in the picture below was made from some paper printed some Victorian flowers. He cut the paper which were printed various patterns to different shapes and created a mushroom, a pigeon, a squirrel, and a hedgehog. I think my grandson would have a lot of fun creating something using this idea.