Beautiful Danish illustrations

And now for a bit of local Danish retro-culture - hopefully in this case, that which is local is also universal.

. Yesterday I bought two books featuring classic newspaper drawings by two legendary Danish illustrators, Arne Ungermann and Aage Sikker Hansen. This stuff was printed in the sunday specials in major Danish newspaper "Politiken" in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Most of the pictures have been restored directly from the surviving newspaper pages, but they've been lovingly restored using Photoshop, so it looks absolutely gorgeous. These books are major revelations for me. Oh wow!

I probably don't have much of an audience for this blog yet, but if I do get some international retro-illustration fans as readers at some point.. well, the books are available online from this bookstore: http://www.saxo.com

Two beautiful renditions of Danish streets in the 30s:

(Ungermann)

(Sikker Hansen)

Arne Ungermann also did illustrations for a legendary Danish childrens book "Palle Alene i Verden"/"Paul Alone in the World" (1942), and a comic strip, "Hanne hansen", about a servant girl. "Paul.." is about a little boy who wakes up one morning and discovers he's the last person on Earth. It's really creepy, almost like an early 1940s childrens version of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend". Well, there are no zombies or vampires in it, and it DOES all turn out to be a dream, but those spooky drawings of completely deserted streets in Copenhagen are very unsettling, especially considering that the book was done during the German occupation of Denmark. It's been translated into several languages.


("Paul Alone in the World")
("Hanne Hansen")