Charley Harper Felt bird-Warbler

Charley Harper

American illustrator Charley Harper was born on a West Virginia farm in 1922. He chose to become an artist and enrolled at the Cincinnati Art Academy, where he studied color theory with none other than Josef Albers, the Bauhaus painter who was visiting the USA at the time.

Harper became a commercial illustrator, but soon became bored. He moved away from realism, claiming that "it doesn't reveal anything new about the subject". He explored clean, two-dimensional, flattened forms with simple lines, all without perspective. Drawing on cubism and other modern currents, his illustrations are done in a style he himself called "minimal realism". Curiously, despite this simplification, the birds are recognizable.

In addition to illustrating articles for magazines in the 40s and 50s, he also illustrated numerous biology and children's books, working until his death at 83.

*This is not a toy