Esphyr Slobodkina (1908-2002) · AuthorAuthor
Esphyr Slobodkina
1908-2002 · Russian-born American abstract painter and author-illustrator of children's books
About Esphyr Slobodkina
Esphyr Slobodkina (1908-2002) was born in Chelyabinsk in the Russian Empire. After the Revolution her family moved to Harbin in Manchuria, where she studied art and architecture, and in 1928 she came to the United States and enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York. With her husband, the painter Ilya Bolotowsky, she was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936, and she painted in a style of clear colors and flat, stylized forms for the rest of her life. In 1938 she met the children's author Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated several of Brown's books, and began writing her own; Caps for Sale (1940) became by far the best known. In 2000 she established the Slobodkina Foundation to preserve her work, and she died in Glen Head, New York, at the age of 93.
On this site
Caps for SaleEsphyr Slobodkina
1940 · Early 20th Century · Novella
Caps for Sale, subtitled A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business, is a picture book about a cap seller who carries his whole stock on his head. He wears his own checked cap first, then a bunch of gray caps, then brown ones, then blue ones, and on the very top a bunch of red caps, and he walks very straight so they will not fall.