A sinister Foreboding Painting

My Work on Andersen’s Fairy Tales I have illustrated H. C. Andersen’s Fairy Tales four times in different moments of my artistic career; first came the 20 black and white and 16 color illustrations I did for the two-volume edition printed in 1965. The next two editions came out in short succession during the next decade. They had color illustrations only, done on polychrome offset printing. I already possessed a considerable professional experience: I had illustrated more than 50 different authors; but this writer I approached with a particular excitement, convinced that I was embarking on an unusually important task. I was familiar with Andersen’s fairy tales since my childhood; they had left me captivated with their enchanting charm in the tender age when imagination reaches its widest range able to shape worlds way more fantastic and incredible than real life. By the time I was about to begin my work I was familiar with just three illustrated editions of the Fairy Tales: the single volume edition printed by the Bulgarian pre-war publisher HEMUS by an unknown German artist; the Czech translation with Jiří Trnka’s illustrations and the two-volumes published in 1955 by Narodna Kultura Publishing House and illustrated by Boris Angeloushev. The first set didn’t impress me at all; it was executed in then fashionable Art Nouveau style. Trnka’s famous illustrations were a completely different story – highly professional and carrying an outstanding graphic culture and artistic taste, they had a profound influence on my senses. Even today after have seen a great number of Andersen editions from all over the world I place Jiří Trnka’s illustrations among the best. Boris Angeloushev’s work was the first qualitative illustrated edition in Bulgaria. Many of his black and white illustrations are examples of professional mastery but they could serve equally well the fairy tales of Charles Perrault or Brothers Grimm’s. The kind of quality they lacked was “inseparable from the writer’s text”. So I embarked on my research of the subject. First thing I had the read the Fairy Tales again in the Bulgarian translation of Svetloslav Minkov who had edited them as well. I also read the German edition published by Dietrich Verlag in Dresden and then I discovered that there was a huge difference from my childhood impressions. After reading them thoroughly I gradually got convinced that they were actually written for us adults.