Zbigniew Lengren (1919–2003)

Super cute! Lengren was a Polish cartoonist of the second half of the 20th century, and this is a collection of his works (translated into German) which was printed in East Germany during the 1970s, perhaps explaining why it is so rare today. The volume is divided into nine sections, starting with his most famous creation - Professor Filutek, a sort of kinder version of Mr. Bean - and carrying on with quirky thoughts on everyday life, love, funny animals, and so on. The eighth is a series of show more colour plates capturing some of his artwork which range from the abstract to the surreal, from the beautiful to the witty. The final section is an essay on the art of cartoon-drawing with numerous pictures.

Lengren appealed to people of all ages. Many of his cartoons, including the Filutek material, don't have dialogue (although may sometimes have signs and such), so they can be funny across the culture divide. Some of his other stuff, which is vaguely New Yorker-esque, requires at least rudimentary language skills to get by. It's a wry and often kind collection of cartoons. (Standard context alert: some of the 'cultural reflections' in these cartoons play on gender stereotypes and expectations that wouldn't fly in the 2020s.) The 'adult' cartoons often play on everyday situations, for instance a nurse who stops to take a phone call from her boyfriend while a needle is stuck in a patient's rump; a young man asking if a seat is taken next to a beautiful woman, even though the rest of the restaurant is empty; or a child painting a convincing tiger while using only his tiny cat as a model. Others are more surreal, for instance a kangaroo with its joey in the pouch, with the joey using a toy kangaroo inside its own little pouch. The Filutek stories are somehow even sillier but usually redemptive in his kindly outlook on life - except when he needs to get out of a mess caused by his dog!

Lengren is a household name, I believe, in Poland, where the complete Professor Filutek cartoons have been published since the cartoonist's death in the early 2000s. I don't know how popular he was across Europe, but this volume - printed in East Germany, mind you, so perhaps with stronger links to Poland via communism - is absolutely divine; a lot of effort has been put into it. I found this in a second-hand book store just at the point where I am progressing my German, and couldn't resist when I saw this beautiful 45-year-old hardback. For the most part, Lengren's cartoons are black-and-white, with colour shading used occasionally for effect. This volume's cover (a paper dust-jacket) is in nine stripes of colour, which are replicated diagonally inside the inside covers. They correspond to the colours introducing each of the nine sections, marked by a triangle of the same shade in the lower-left corner of the verso page and the upper-right corner of the recto. This same colour is then used for the shading in that section - so, for instance, the only colour added to the Filutek section is bright orange. I don't know if these colours had any meaning for Lengren when he wrote his different cartoons, but as he was involved in the creation of this book, it seems likely.

Anyhow, this is a thoroughly sweet collection. Probably quite rare now, so I'm glad this copy made its way halfway around the world to me. show less