CZECH IT OUT!
Translating the Czech artist Vojtech Kubasta's movable and pop-up books and the History of Pop-up books

by Ellen G.K. Rubin
(reprinted from Book Source Monthly; October, 1999; Vol.5, No.7)

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Don’t get me started about how I am only able to speak one language, and how remiss America is by ignoring the innate ability of most children to become bilingual. I can only speak English—period. Now, with that understood, let me tell you about my attempts to translate an illustrated book by the Czech artist, Vojtech Kubasta*.

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When it comes to books illustrated and paper engineered by Kubasta, I am like a pig seeking truffles. (I’ll explain why later.) After all, I am a collector of pop-up and movable books, first and foremost. So enamored am I with Kubasta that when I recently found his book with ‘pierced’ boards allowing the reader to see through to the next page, I couldn’t pass it up. It’s title, Svrcek a Mravce, (The **Grasshopper and the Ants), is evident from the illustrations, wonderfully anthropomorphic and richly colored. The language appeared to be Czech. Although I keep a Czech dictionary handy, I could not find in it words from the title or from the text. What was I to do? I don’t know anyone who speaks Czech.

About this time, at a local restaurant, I was served by a waitress with an accent I couldn’t place. "What is your native language?" I asked, envying her bi-, or possibly more, lingual ability. "Hungarian," she said, with a hint of paprika. Hungary is near Czechoslovakia I reasoned. Maybe my book is written in Hungarian. She agreed to my stopping by to have her determine the book’s language. But it wouldn’t be that easy. When I showed it to her, she knew immediately it wasn’t Hungarian, politely tolerating my ignorance. She thought the text looked Romanian. Romanian!! I know a Romanian couple, architect friends of my brother-in-law.

I called Mihai and simultaneously faxed him copies of the front and back covers. I could feel the thrill of success at hand. He was delighted and surprised to have all of this appear on his fax machine amid the blue-lined drawings and pages of building codes. But no, he said sadly. It is not Romanian. "It looks Serbian." Serbian??!! I don’t remotely know anyone who speaks Serbian, now feeling lost in the Tower of Babel. "I’ll have my wife, Donna, show it around her multi-national office" he offered. "Maybe someone there can help."

Dejection. A sure dead-end. Then, I remembered last year I had purchased a Kubasta pop-up from a Czech dealer at the New York ABAA show. And, as collectors’ habits would have it, I had kept his card. I e-mailed him and faxed the copies. And waited. Within two weeks, Zybynik Groh, of Art…on paper, responded by e-mail, "Here is the solution to your puzzle." The book was Slovakian!!, a language very close to Czech. It had been published in Bratislava, the current capital of the Slovak Republic, by Mlade leta, "Slovak publishers for the youth." Zbynik told me he had never seen a Kubasta like this one.

Finally, my quest had me seek out Michael Dawson, an English authority on Kubasta. Since this book does not appear on Dawson’s Kubasta bibliography, I wondered would he know of it. A fax flew again across the ‘Pond’. Although Michael’s list already had a "pierced" book from 1959, this one, from 1958, was new to him. He was delighted to add it to his ‘check-list’ stating, [The Grasshopper and the Ants] "must be one of Kubasta’s earliest children’s book efforts."

Whew! My simple question had been answered in the most roundabout way. But in the end, I learned what I needed to know, had brought delightful surprises to some, gave new knowledge to others, made new friends, and had reacquainted myself with old ones in the process. And all with just the English language. Imagine that!

If Vojtech Kubasta, artist, illustrator, and paper engineer, is not known to you, I need to introduce you to him so that you may understand my passion and, hopefully, come to appreciate his work. The term, paper engineer, describes an artist who either makes illustrations three-dimensional and leaping off the page, or movable, activated by tabs, flaps, or wheels. While little has been written about Kubasta, and details about his personal and professional life are sketchy at best, his movable books, produced largely after 1960, are familiar to pop-up book collectors and dealers.

Born in Vienna, Kubasta studied architecture in Prague, graduating in 1938. During the war, he eked out a living as an illustrator. Most impressive from this time are the series of hand-colored lithographs of historical, architectural landmarks in Prague done with historians, Zdenek Wirth and Dr.Otakar Storch-Marien. Their folio format , with loosely inserted bound text, foreshadowed the panascopic series of pop-ups to come later.

Kubasta continued to illustrate children’s books for the State Publishing House, as well as movie posters and lobbycards for American movies which managed to get through the Iron Curtain. Publishers were able to take advantage of the older, slower printing presses not destroyed in the wars, as they had been in England and Germany. The result was richly vivid illustrations, seemingly saturated with ink. Kubasta’s faux-naif style with a Bohemian flavor is somewhat exotic to an American eye. Throughout Kubatsa’s stories are the anthropomorphic animals, dwarves, puppets, and wizards Kubasta collectors love. Since I don’t read Czech, it is a testimony to his talent that I appreciate the stories without the text.

In the late 1950s, Kubasta’s work took a major shift. It is not known specifically what influenced him to experiment with movable illustrations, but with an architect’s eye for three dimensions, a graphic artist’s talent for illustrating, and a cultural bias towards puppetry and folk tales, Kubasta possessed all the elements to uniquely construct pop-up books. His books were mostly large double-page pop-ups with text printed parallel to the spine. His genius was to take a single sheet of cardstock and cut and fold it so that at least four dimensional layers were formed. For some illustrations, additional pieces were added which could be moved with a tab. The large "Panascopic Model Book" was a tri-fold with the last cardstock page unfolding to create a three-dimensional model standing almost 12 inches tall! Text pages were stapled inside, much like the earlier historical portfolios.