Known for her whimsical and vibrant graphic style, Maira Kalman is a visual artist whose creativity touches many fields. She is director of the renowned graphic design firm M & Co, begun with her late husband Tibor Kalman. She has written and illustrated over a dozen children’s books, is well known for her New Yorker magazine covers, and recently created illustrations and a dramatization of the grammar classic, Strunk and White’s 1959 The Elements of Style.   Lastly, Kalman created a monthly on-line column entitled Principles of Uncertainty for The New York Times that became a published book in 2007.  An excerpt from Principles of Uncertainty “What is this book? What is anything? Who am I? Who are you? Stop it. Forget it. This is a year in my life profusely illustrated. Abounding with anguish, confusion, bits of wisdom. Musings, meanderings, buckets of Joie de Vivre and restful sojourns. And now…” 

 

Her world view contains more than a dash of the absurd, a photographer’s keen street smart sense of observation, and a very punchy palette. On view will be her gouaches, silk screen prints and photography that represent work from a variety of projects, from her renderings of sayings embroidered on pillowcases to an interior scene of Sir John Soane’s London house/museum. But her New York scenes, above all, convey the cacophonous joy of the urban landscape—akin to a less polite Florine Stettheimer, who also was a great observer of city mores in the 1930s. Museum patrons at the Guggenheim, strollers in a city park, share with Ronis a lyrical love of the city in motion, with an optimism that can carry the day.

 

Maira Kalman will be attending both the opening on January 9th and will be giving an informal talk about her work as well as a book signing on Saturday January 10th at 11:00. 

You are welcome to bring to the book signing any children’s books you may have and Jackson Fine Art will be selling signed books of The Elements of Style and Principles of Uncertainty.