LONDON.- Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator by Alan Powers (September 2016) provides the first fully illustrated survey of Ardizzone's work, placing his activity as an artist and illustrator in the context of 20th-century British art, illustration, printing and publishing. Copiously illustrated with many previously unpublished images, it draws for the first time on the family’s archives, those of Ardizzone’s publishers and conversations with those who knew the artist. The book is published to coincide with Ardizzone: A Retrospective, a major exhibition co-curated by Alan Powers and House of Illustration’s Olivia Ahmad, on display 23 September 2016 – 15 January 2017.

Edward Ardizzone, RA, CBE (1900–1979) was one of relatively few British artists who defined the field of illustration for their generation. Although his work as an artist and illustrator was wide-ranging, it is for his illustrated children's books, almost continuously available since they were first published from the late 1930s onwards, that he is best known. His lively line-and-wash drawings were based on constant observation of the world, disciplined by classical figure composition. Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, 1936, was the first of a dozen books that he both wrote and illustrated, while adding visual commentaries to the words of contemporaries such as Eleanor Farjeon and Robert Graves and to classic authors from Cervantes and Bunyan to Dickens and Trollope.

In the Second World War, Ardizzone served as a war artist across Europe and North Africa, recording humorous and tragic scenes alike with unparalleled sympathy. Drawing on previously unpublished archive sources, Alan Powers also reveals Ardizzone’s early beginnings as a painter of London low life in the 1930s, for which he soon became famous, and his range of magazine illustration and advertising work. Fellow illustrator Shirley Hughes wrote, ‘his work has sentiment in abundance, but never, ever, sentimentality . . . the humanity of his work shines out like a steadfast beacon.’

‘Alan Powers has a keen sense of his subject’s achievement, and is seriously knowledgeable on the history, practice, and art of illustration. I think Ardizzone would have approved.’ Sir Quentin Blake

Dr. Alan Powers has written widely on twentieth century art, architecture and design, including Eric Ravilious, artist and writer (2013) and 100 Years of Architecture (2016). He is a curator and frequent lecturer and teaches at New York University, London.

Ardizzone: A Retrospective is on display from 23 September 2016 – 15 January 2017 at House of Illustration.