Maria Heiner

This exhibition catalog presents a selection of little-known children's and youth book illustrations by the artist Lea Grundig, who had to flee Germany in the early 1940s and emigrated to Eretz Israel. Of her more than 4,000 graphic works, about 1,000 are illustrations, over 400 of which she created in exile, allowing her to earn a living there. The most beautiful of these are showcased here alongside the children's books. Their content is diverse: they address stories from Jewish tradition, legends, fairy tales, or folk songs, animal stories, or depictions of nature. However, the Holocaust, persecution, and death are also not omitted. The illustrations possess not only artistic value but also document the emergence of a cultural foundation of Israeli society before the establishment of the state. Children's books in Hebrew were particularly in demand there, as it was necessary to teach all the immigrant children, who came from various countries and had grown up speaking different languages, Ivrit.