Juliet Kepes II

This week I am focusing my posts on the innovative artist, writer and illustrator, Juliet Appleby Kepes (1919-1999) She is best known for the 17 children’s books she wrote and illustrated, which won her a Caldecott Honor citation (for “Five Little Monkeys” in 1952) and other awards from the Museum of ModernArt, the American Institute of Graphic Artists, and the Society of Illustrators. The New York Times four times cited her books among the ten best children’s books of the year. Her book “Birds” (1968) was published under the auspices of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts of

Harvard College Library, and introduced by its curator, Philip Hofer.

The British-born wife of Gyorgy Kepes, the influential artist and theorist, Juliet Kepes was trained

at the Chicago Institute of Design (known then and now as the New Bauhaus), and worked as an

artist in a number of fields relating to children, designing environmental spaces, murals, sculpture

and textiles, among other things, sometimes in collaboration with her husband. Her work is featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s show, “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000”

(July-November 2012), in which the famous playroom environment she and Gyorgy Kepes

designed for their daughter in 1949 was recreated at the Museum for this exhibition. Juliet

Kepes’s gouache drawing for the playroom mural was reproduced as a poster for the MOMA

exhibition.

Juliet Kepes also collaborated with her husband on several architectural mural projects at Massachusetts schools and libraries, including schemes for the Morse School in Cambridge, the Fitchburg Children’s Library, and the Wellesley Free Library (all commissioned by the architect Carl

Koch); and the Taunton School (The Architects’ Collaborative). As well she designed a series of

bronze bird bas-reliefs for a Cambridge playground, commissioned by the municipal arts council

(1980). Juliet Kepes was a Radcliffe Institute Scholar in 1970 and 1971.

Books Written and Illustrated by Juliet Kepes:

Five Little Monkeys. Boston (Houghton Mifflin), 1952.

Beasts from a Brush. New York (Pantheon), 1955.

Two Little Birds and Three. Boston (Houghton, Mifflin), 1960.

Frogs Merry. New York (Pantheon), 1961.

Lady Bird, Quickly. Boston (Atlantic, Little Brown), 1964.

Five Little Monkey Business. Boston (Houghton Mifflin), 1965.

The Seed That Peacock Planted. Boston (Atlantic, Little Brown), 1967.

Birds. New York (Walker & Co., in association with the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts,

Harvard College Library), 1968.

Run, Little Monkeys! Run, Run, Run! New York (Pantheon), 1974

Cock-a-Doodle-Doo. New York (Pantheon), 1978.

The Story of a Bragging Duck. Boston (Houghton, Mifflin), 1983.

Books Illustrated by Juliet Kepes

McLeod, Emilie Warren. The Seven Remarkable Bears. Boston (Houghton, Mifflin), 1954.

Smith, William Jay. Laughing Time. Boston (Atlantic, Little Brown), 1955.

Read, Herbert (ed.). This Way, Delight. A book of poetry for the young. New York (Pantheon), 1956.

Miller, Mary Britton. Give a Guess. Poems. New York (Pantheon), 1957.

Smith, William Jay. Blue Boy’s Book of Beasts. Boston (Atlantic, Little Brown), 1957.

Smith, William Jay. Puptents and Pebbles. A nonsense ABC. Boston (Atlantic, Little Brown), 1959.