Image: Carlsen Verlag
From Wednesday (February 7th) to August 18th, an exhibition dedicated entirely to pocket-sized picture books can be seen at the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg: “Pixi – The Exhibition. 70 Years of Small Books”.
Hamburg. It was created in cooperation with the Hamburg-based Carlsen Verlag, which now publishes over 3,000 titles and sells 14 million copies a year, as the museum announced. The show shows the development of the “Pixi” books since 1954. The first copy was published at that time – with the title “Miezekatzen”.
The variety of topics becomes clear from the over 1,000 books on display – from animal books to fairy tales to popular characters such as the forest goblin Pixi. The beginning of the success story is described on the Altona Museum’s website: The Danish publisher Per Hjald Carlsen wanted to offer high-quality books at a fair price in his Hamburg publishing house at the beginning of the 1950s. His goal was to promote reading: every child should own a book and be able to enjoy reading. He named the series after the English word for goblin: pixie.
The Hamburg illustrator and exhibition curator Regina Kehn reports: “‘Pixi’ opens up its own world in the diversity of narrative and illustration styles. You learn a lot from a cultural and historical perspective by understanding and observing it.” The walk through the exhibition past more than 1,000 “Pixi” books from all decades and Kehn’s wall illustrations reflects the respective times.
In 1982, the character Pixi himself took shape. The character – a little gnome with a pointed hat, green doublet and red boots – was created by the illustrator Eva Wenzel-bürger. Dorothea Tust has given Pixi his face since 2003. At some stations in the exhibition, visitors can delve deeper into the content. This is how they find out that the image of the princess has changed: from just waving to working. Or that the successful book series “Connie” started in 1992 with the “Pixi” book “Connie goes to kindergarten”.
Social developments also influence the “Pixi” content. Over the decades, the professional world has changed. In 2015, the “Pixi” book “My Friend Walter” was published in German, Persian, Serbian, Arabic and Farsi and distributed free of charge to refugees in initial reception centers. In 2022 there was a title in Ukrainian with “Pixi gets a visitor”.
To mark the anniversary, a “Pixi” book by the well-known Hamburg writer Saša Stanišić, illustrated by Regina Kehn, will be published in the spring. It is important to her to tell the story of how the little books came into being in the exhibition – from the first sketch to the draft to the finished illustration.
Visitors young and old can also immerse themselves in a “Pixi” bath with books, present their favorite “Pixi” at a hands-on station, take selfies or simply read on bean bags and in cozy little tents. Of course, that’s what this exhibition is about, which is aimed primarily at families, as museum director Anja Dauschek explains: “The exhibition should be fun and make you want to read books.”
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Source: Nachrichten
