Esphyr Slobodkina

Biography

Esphyr Slobodkina (1908–2002), internationally renowned artist and author of the children’s classic Caps for Sale, was among the first female American artists to explore abstraction and the first to use collage in American storybooks. She studied art in Russia and China before immigrating to the United States in 1928. She was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, and her work is represented in prominent museum collections across the country.

In addition to Caps for Sale Slobodkina also wrote and/or illustrated over 24 children’s books. Over the decades she also completed hundreds of paintings and assemblage works that can be found in major museums in the United States.

Before her death in late 2002 Slobodkina left copious notes and illustrations for additional stories. Slobodkina encouraged her assistant and protégé Ann Marie Mulhearn Sayer to carry on her storybook work after Slobodkina’s death. Many of Slobodkina’s story ideas and characters (including Slobodkina herself) are incorporated into the continuing Caps for Sale book series.

Ann Marie Mulhearn

Biography

Ann Marie Mulhearn Sayer met Esphyr Slobodkina in 1996, when she was hired to write musical narratives for Caps for Sale and other Slobodkina books. Slobodkina and Sayer became close friends, and Sayer has administrated and exhibited Slobodkina’s works for over twenty five years. Using Slobodkina’s original art and reflecting upon hours of conversations with her on perspective and her choices in stylization, Sayer employed great care to develop each layout as the artist herself might have done. Sayer scanned Slobodkina’s original art, extracted and manipulated images to create the desired scenes using Photoshop and layers. Each object was transferred and stacked in multiple computerized layers for each scene much the same as the paper collage technique employed by Slobodkina years ago. A color palette was made using Slobodkina’s original illustrations.

The continuing Caps for Sale series is based on story ideas from Slobodkina and Sayer’s imagination with prior permission from Slobodkina. Through these posthumous stories, Sayer awakens Slobodkina’s voice. To learn more about Ann Marie visit www.CapsforSale.org.