Jiri Trnka - Filmmaker

In my previous post I talked about Jiri Trnka's wonderful book illustrations, but he is probably (rightly) better known as a maker of stop-frame animated films. One of my favourites is shown above - The Hand, (click on the arrow to watch the video). Trnka is perhaps better known for his adapatation of A Midsummer's Night's Dream or the Hans Christian Anderson story The Emperor's Nightingale, but this, his last film, shows the power of puppets and animation in the hands of a master to speak of important things. The film is a powerful allegory on totalitarianism and the artist, it is sad but amusing. Perhaps the best indication of its power is the fact that it was banned by the then Communist government.

When we first visited Prague, my husband, son and I went to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Trade Fair Palace. This is a gallery that is often missed by tourists. It is slightly off the visitors' beaten path and I don't think people from the western part of Europe and the US really appreciate the importance of the contribution made by Czech artists to modern art, we certainly didn't before we went through the doors of the Trade Fair Palace. One of the great things about the museum is that it mixes applied and high arts, hence there is a section devoted to Trnka, including a set from one of his films. It was one of the highlights of the museum for us, especially for our son. Now years later our son is in his final year at film school and over the summer vacation a set was built on our dining room table. Jiri Trnka was partly responsible for that.

Jiri Trnka - Illustrator

I recently bought an old book from a second-hand bookshop called Legends of Old Bohemia. It was published by Paul Hamlyn in the UK and by Artia in the former Czechoslovakia, where the book was printed and designed. The book appealed to me on three grounds - firstly of course the subject matter, secondly it was translated by Edith Pargeter (see my blogpost on her) a favourite author of mine and finally the illustrations were by Jiri Trnka (illustration from book above).


I had first come across Jiri Trnka , when I was working at the Puppet Centre in Battersea. There I had come to admire Jiri Trnka as a designer and maker of animated films. In my next post I will give talk more about his animated films. But he was a man of many parts and created some wonderful book illustrations. And this book is full of them.


I also have a copy of Grimm's Fairytales (again published by Paul Hamlyn) illustrated by Trnka, and again absolutely wonderful. The last three illustrations are from it - very Trnka and very Czech.