The Life and Art of Vojtech Kubasta (1914-1992)

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Exporting Kubasta

Until the late 1950s, Kubasta’s work was rarely seen outside of Eastern Europe. Leopold Schliesser has been credited with introducing Kubasta’s work to the West. Schliesser was a Jewish banker from Prague who had fled the Nazis in 1938, and became the owner of Bancroft & Company, a London firm. It is not known whether Schliesser first became acquainted with Kubasta’s books in his native Prague while searching for cheap exports for his firm.38 In any case, he had a good eye for quality at a bargain price 39 and as the owner of Bancroft, Inc., he negotiated with Artia to import the titles under the new imprint, Westminster Books.

Other importers also acquired rights to Kubasta’s books, especially the eight titles in the fairy tale series. Joseph Lefebvre of Brussels and Marie-Louis Neirinck of Antwerp modestly contributed to the distribution of Kubasta’s books in Europe where they sold for the equivalent of $1.15 US. These pioneer pop-up publishers soon discovered the difficulties of dealing with state-run companies behind the Iron Curtain. The Communist knew little of contracts, had layers of bureaucracy, and required cumbersome proofs of solvency.40 Nonetheless, the obstacles were eventually overcome, and thousands of copies of the books were imported. Lefebvre contracted with a supplier of small Belgian grocery stores to give away Kubasta’s books as premiums with purchases.

Most Americans were unaware that many of their favorite cartoon films were illustrated and animated in Czechoslovakia. In the 1960s, William L. Snyder’s Rembrandt Films capitalized on Czech animated film talent by producing cartoons such as Madeline, Popeye, and Tom and Jerry, in Prague. Unlike the Europeans, he had a more positive experience working with the Communists. To ply his trade behind the Iron Curtain, “all he needed to do,” he said, “was offer Western cash and all doors were opened. It was just business, hard currency for low-cost, high-quality labor.” “The Iron Curtain,” he added, “was always more porous than it seemed.”41

In 1977, the Artia Foreign Trade Corporation exported nine Kubasta titles in the Farsi language to Iran. Kubasta‘s panoramic books [were] protected by a Czech patent.42 Using the Panascopic format but without text, and for the first time combining photographs and illustration, Kubasta designed a pop-up book celebrating Mecca, its pilgrims, and surrounding areas. His books were widely distributed in the most remote corners of the world. For instance, Japanese teachers used How Columbus Discovered America-1961, the Panascopic Model book, as an educational tool to teach children the history of the United States.43 By 1977, Kubasta was credited with over three hundred titles published on every continent. His books were translated into thirty-seven languages and over 10 million copies were sold. The worldwide sales filled Artia’s coffers with hard currency, allowing it to finance lesser-known authors and illustrators. Yet in a 1973 monograph, The Czech Book and the World, which celebrated twenty years of Artia publishing, Kubasta’s was not mentioned even once.44

Financial success buffered Vojtech Kubasta and his family from the daily privations experienced by most individuals living under Communist regimes. He lived by the Vltava River in Smichov, a fashionable area of Prague, from 1945 until his death. The five-story apartment house can be seen in several of his children’s book illustrations and maps of Prague. He had money, for example, to spend in the high-priced shops that sold Western goods and he often indulged his family with his favorite Western products: Heinz Ketchup and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

In the early 1960s, the American entrepreneur, Waldo Hunt, discovered Kubasta’s pop-up books at a European book fair. As the owner of a print/brokerage company, Graphics International, he sought to distribute the unique and inexpensive books in the United States. He approached Bancroft with an order for over one million copies. The company’s excited production manager, Michael Thomas, immediately went to Prague to work out the details. Wending his way up the chain of command, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, the Communist-run Artia finally responded that it could not increase production so dramatically because it did not fit into the Five Year Plan.45 Hunt had no choice but to have his company produce its own line of movable books and was, therefore, responsible for renewing America’s interest in pop-up and movable books. Hunt’s new company, Intervisual Books, was the innovative leader in the field for three decades. Unfortunately, Kubasta died before knowing the pivotal role his uniquely paper engineered and illustrated books played in the worldwide resurgence of pop-ups and movable books.

Walt Disney Productions

Vojtech Kubasta frequently expressed interest in working with Walt Disney,46 and eventually got the opportunity in the 1970s when he was asked to paper engineer and illustrate several Disney pop-ups for movie tie-ins. He was not permitted to put his name on the five books in the Disney movie series: Bambi; The Jungle Book; Mickey Mouse-Movie Star; The Aristocats; and, 101 Dalmatians; and he was obliged to illustrate the titles in the Disney style. However, in 101 Dalmatians and The Aristocats, he was given artistic license to create his unique style of complicated movables and internal pull-tabs. All of the versions were manufactured solely by Artia, including the design, illustration, printing, binding and finishing.47 Kubasta, always self-confident and now a very dependable source of profit for Artia, believed that had he lived in the Western world, he would have been another Walt Disney. The Disney books were published in many languages. Joseph Lefebvre of Belgium applied to the European Disney group for approval and received permission to publish The Aristocats and 101 Dalmatians in Dutch, Italian, German, Danish, and Flemish. Publishers and distributors in other countries used the same approach.48

Nativities

Among the more collectible and rare of Kubasta’s pop-ups are the nativity tableaux. It is estimated that he made fifteen to seventeen nativities including table decorations, greeting cards, and crèches, some with stories in the Panascopic Model Series format. In spite of the Communists’ edicts prohibiting public displays of religious icons, the state-run publishing houses sold quantities of the crèches to its citizens. Both Artia and Orbis published the nativity scenes. Today, there is a society in the Czech Republic solely devoted to collecting these remarkable paper structures. On a visit to the Montreal Expo in 1967 with an artists’ group, Kubasta saw a Bohemian nineteenth-century wooden crèche, The Bethlehem of Trebechovice, with 2000 individually carved figures and 300 movable parts.49 He translated the crèche into a pop-up made of his trademark cardstock.
Much later he made another favorite crèche of glossy, light cardstock. Pulling briskly from both ends caused the card to make a snapping sound. The opened greeting card, packaged also with two free-standing figures, could then stand by itself.

Although he was not an overtly religious man, Vojtech Kubasta depicted Christian images and tableaux with dignity and respect. His mangers, drawn in the biblical motif, are surrounded with Moors on camels and Middle Eastern families paying homage to the Christ child, and are sometimes set in the center of the Old Town of Prague. Nineteenth-century horse-drawn carriages bring celebrants to bear witness to the birth of the Savior while camels bedecked in Arabian ornaments approach from another direction. The juxtapositions do not seem jarring. Kubasta’s intensely colored and uniform palette and depiction of the universality of people’s expressions, give the entire tableaux a calm, reverent aura. While Kubasta’s other pop-ups project a boisterous spirit, his crèches evoke a quiet candle-lit niche in a magnificent church.