Natalie Frank to Release TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM This Year
For Tales of the Brothers Grimm, thirty-six celebrated and lesser-known of the unsanitized fairy tales collected by the illustrious brothers were carefully chosen by artist Natalie Frank, re-interpreted in seventy-five gouache and chalk pastel drawings, and cast in a Surrealist dreamscape. This will be the largest collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales ever illustrated by a fine artist. Each of the tales opens with a hand-drawn title page, is framed by a unique border, and small drawings punctuate each story, all in the tradition of classic fairy tale editions. In Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Frank draws special attention to the roles of women in the original form of these fairy tales: these were stories told and collected by women and Frank's drawings, for the first time, recast these characters as complex Feminist protagonists. The foremost Grimm scholar, Jack Zipes, introduces the book and contextualizes these stories and drawings within a history of the Brothers Grimm, its illustrations, and the tradition of the fairy tale. A complex and unique world of the imagination emerges from the pairing of these tales with Frank's drawings, assembled by the celebrated designer, Marian Bantjes. Additional texts include a conversation between the artist and director Julie Taymor, as well as essays by Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin and curator Claire Gilman.
This book marks Frank's exhibitions of drawings based on the Brothers Grimm at:
The Drawing CenterNew York
35 Wooster Street
April 10-June 28, 2015 and Blanton Museum of Art
University of Texas, Austin
July 11-November 15, 2015. New York-based painter Natalie Frank was born in Austin, Texas, in 1980. She earned an MFA in visual arts at the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2006 and holds a BA in studio art from Yale University. In 2003-4 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. Frank's work is represented in numerous collections, including the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, Brooklyn Museum, Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Montclair Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Williams College Museum of Art. Solo exhibitions, including upcoming shows, at The Drawing Center, New York; The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin; ACME, Los Angeles; Fredericks&Freiser, New York; Arndt and Partner, Zurich; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; Briggs Robinson Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions at Istanbul74, Istanbul, Turkey; The London Museum of Design;The Rose Art Museum, Watham, MA; Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; The National Academy Museum, New York; Arndt and Partner, Berlin, Germany; and Jack Tilton Gallery, New York.
The book will be released in June 2015.
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