Friday, December 23, 2011

Winter Scenes of old Czechoslovakia

A set of 10 lithographed postcards from 1948 illustrated by Czech artist Karel Svolinský (1896-1986). I recently was doing a little online "me-commerce" when I discovered this set of postals at Antik Buddha's online site. Svolinský's work charmed me immediately just as his stamp designs have done so in the past. Anyone familiar with Czech postage stamps, banknotes or Czech art and painting after WWII, would at some time encounter Mr. Svolinský and his work. He was one of the most influential Czech artists of the last century. In the course of 40 years, he designed 210 stamp designs for the post of Czechoslovakia. He was also a teacher, a painter, a theater designer, an illustrator and a great designer of posters, ex libris and books.
      This set of folk art postals came packaged in a paper wrapper with an adorable snowman on the front (seen below). The 4-color original lithographed prints are titled Zima, or Winter in english, and illustrate some of the Czech folk art traditions of the Winter solstice holidays. 











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