MONTCLAIR, NJ.- Featuring work by the acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator Eric Carle (b. 1929), Eric Carle: Animals and Friends highlights the artist’s meticulous preparatory process and key childhood themes of animals and friendship. It includes more than 60 original collages, studies, and book dummies/mock ups. Especially noteworthy are Carle’s colorful, hand-painted tissue paper collages, which form the basis of his illustrations. In addition to finished collages, there will be preliminary works including pencil studies that underscore Carle’s meticulous care for his subject. The works in this exhibition address the subjects of two recent publications by Carle: his love of color and use of imagination expressed in The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse (2011) and the celebration of childhood from Friends (2013).

Carle’s love of nature is legendary. To recognize this passion, the exhibition includes selected work from The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, as well as other publications exploring his interest in animals. The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse was inspired by the bright, unconventional animal paintings of the German artist Franz Marc (1880-1916). Marc’s Blue Horse I (1911) and other works were admired by the young Carle, who spent his boyhood in Germany when the Nazi regime prohibited the creation or display of modern art. His art teacher secretly showed the teenager examples of the forbidden art. Carle recently observed, “My green lion, polka-dotted donkey and other animals painted in the ‘wrong’ colors were really born that day seventy years ago.”

Eric Carle's newest picture book, Friends, published in November 2013, is a celebration of friendship and childhood expressed in colorful tissue paper collage illustrations. It recounts the poetic story of an imaginary journey of the child at play. Inspired by Carle's memories of early friendships, as well as friendships in his adult life, the book is testament to the importance of close relationships and the lasting bonds that remain through every stage in life.

Since his best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, was published in 1969, Carle has illustrated more than 70 books, most of which he also wrote. The characteristic themes of friendship and nature will be further explored in additional works from Carle’s vast repertoire, including Do You Want to Be My Friend? (1971), The Rooster Who Set Out to See the World (1972), Do Bears Have Mothers Too? (1973), Animals Animals (1989), and Where Are You Going? To See My Friend (2001).