Leo Lionni - Storyteller, Artist, Designer

The first survey of Leo Lionni’s protean career as a graphic designer, children’s book creator, and fine artist.

Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni opens at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, on 18 November 2023. Leo Lionni (1910–1999) was a key figure of postwar visual culture, who believed that a smart, pithy design language could unite people across generations and cultural boundaries.

He first achieved success in the field of graphic design, serving as the influential art director of Fortune magazine from 1948 to 1960 and personally executing such innovative designs as the catalogue for the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal photo exhibition The Family of Man. Then, in the 1960s, he embarked on an equally groundbreaking career in picture books, using torn-paper collages to illustrate modern animal fables such as Frederick and Swimmy, which are still beloved today. But even as his books won multiple Caldecott Honors, Lionni ― who had begun as a painter ― also maintained a fine art practice centered on his Parallel Botany, a richly imagined world of fanciful plants.

• Hardback
• 240 pages
• 23.5 x 2.54 x 28.58 cm