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Estonia's Master of Art and Imagination in Picture Books
Illustrator and author Edgar Valter created stories and characters that have become household names in Estonian children's culture. Here we have a glimpse of his life, his work, and his legacy.
Estonian illustrator and author Edgar Valter (1929-2006; 1996 IBBY Honour List distinction) was not only an illustrator, but also a writer and a spokesperson for children's literature during the second half of the twentieth century. This overview is dedicated to the memory of Edgar Valter, providing a brief analysis of his works. It includes the development of his illustration style, his evolution from illustrator to author-illustrator, and his eventual status as the "Grand Old Man" of Estonian children's culture.
Valter, the illustrator
Edgar Valter's development as an artist was long and eventful. His childhood was sunny and safe, as Valter himself has characterized it. As a schoolboy, he was always busy drawing pictures. He was not a good pupil, and all his copybooks were full of drawings. But his childhood drawings were printed in the newspapers of the time, and he gave his first caricature to the editor of Ohtuleht, the second biggest daily newspaper in Estonia at the age of 15. Having no academic art education, he used every free minute for drawing, learning techniques in practice, drawing people in parks, in the street, outdoors. "That was my school. And I wanted to be a good pupil there!" he said.
Valter's first illustrations for a children's book were published in 1948, and he worked as a freelancer illustrator for years afterward. The main tendency in children's literature of 1940-1950s was so-called socialist realism, pointing out the values of hardworking and collectivist heroes. Valter was one of the first illustrators in the 1950s to have enough courage to avoid the dogmatic image and to draw joyful, dynamic, humorous figures.
Valter was entrusted with illustrating the first translation of Astrid Lindgren's works in the Estonian language Kalle Bbmkvisti seiklused (in English Bill Bergson, Master Detective) in 1960. Contemporary Estonian author Leelo Tungal was a schoolgirl then. She remembers, "The brightest experience of the song festival in Tallinn in 1960 was that the book by Astrid Lindgren, Kalle Blomkvist/Bill Bergson was bought for me. I read...