As mother, she worked with a great zeal to show her children her works and for last 40 years, she wrote approximately 50 picture books. She won Grand Prix, Mobius international des Multimedias Competition for CD-ROM Alphabet, Paris, France
organized by Unesco and in 2000, she got a new media award in Bologna, Italy. However, behind these honorable prizes, there were her love and responsibility helping her children's future. In addition, her memories and respect about grandmother who made her be interested in picture books, is another driving force that she could create her own picture book world. Maybe without these, we couldn't see her works.

"In a great music, there is an original rhythm. That music is in a nice harmony that any other music cannot copy. The music with a beautiful and harmonious melody, is pleasant for even children and old people and so do the pictures. "I don't want to
draw a picture book repeating the same patterns." she expressed her philosophy of picture books and said that whenever she started new work, she tried to make a big idea as if she took an examination. Her philosophy, that the most important thing for the picture book is a love for the children and the works without thinking and feeling in a view of child are not moving any more, they are just dead picture books, implies many things for us in this age flooded with lots of picture books. On the other hands, as a graphic designer, she lectured in the Academy in Berlin from 1992 to 1993 and in 1999, she received an honorary doctor's degree of design from Kingston University, England.

The work, which made her become world-famous, is an experimental book design she has been doing since 1950's. Her book design is beyond the limit of a fixed form of book and print production. It suggests a new possibility of book as an objet which is three-dimensional and stimulates the senses. Her works remind us children's pure pictures with vivid colors, simple and geometrical shapes and large description. She induces instinct for play by using interesting materials such as Aluminum and tracing paper. Especially, her picture books are based on these artistic book design process . The new attempts are noticeable. For example, a book with uneven surface develops children's finger sensation, pop-up books and a book with holes make children feel the shapes sensibly. These experimental books give children lots of possibilities to develop their imaginations and creations.

With her great passion for picture book and her childhood experience influenced by grandmother who really liked picture books, she started making it for her children and as she drew more and more, she wanted to break down a boundary between pictures and art through picture book and she thought that was what she had to do for whole of her life.

Kveta Pacovska, the author who understands children the most, said that the most important thing was a love for the children and the works without thinking and feeling in a view of child were dead books. Thus, she always tries to recall her childhood and revives the feeling of playing at that time.

expression - Reproducing of childhood's playing feeling. When you open her book, pictures, which seemed to be drawn by children, will catch your eyes. Drastic and primitive colors which excludes artificial feeling completely and use of the lines and styles which are perfectly same with the one of children, are the most significant characteristic of her works. In addition, an eccentric collage, a mirror reflecting oneself, over lapping of various piece of paper. new characters and 3-dimensional pop-up are the items using often and repeatedly. Particularly, geometrical shapes including alphabets and numbers, are essential for her creative language of work..

materials - Freedom and regulations co-exist in her selection. Every materials are so attractive that she wants to use all of them but she can't. Therefore, she selects proper materials depending on the work and then sets the regular rules for the use of materials and tries to keep the rules. Selection of materials and drawing pictures should not be hypocrisy and we should express our emotions and thoughts as they are.

colors - She pursues maximized beauty. Red, green, white and black have the strongest contrast and this means the greatest beauty for her. When she put the colors, she considers the relation among colors, ratio, rhythm, size and amount then she also regards that how people use colors generally. She sometimes compares the use of colors with music because each sound is beautiful but when they get together, they create a new level of sense in the harmony, inharmony and coexistence. Therefore, her works are evaluated that those are similar to music.

Exhibitions of Kveta Pacovska

2009 Galery Hollar, Game and Talks, Prague
2008 Maximum Kontrast - MAK Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt
2007 Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris
2004 CRDP de l’academie de Creteil, Paris, France
2003 Chihiro New Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Taipei, International Book Exhibition, Taiwan


Awards of Kveta Pacovska

2008 Golden Ribbon Award, Czech section of IBBY
2008 Le Prix du plus beau livre Francois 2008 for a book《A l’infini》, Paris, France))
2006~7 The Golden Illustrator, APIC, Barcelona, Catalunya
2001 The Sankei Children’s Books Culture Award, Paper City, Tokyo, Japan
2000 Grand Prix, Mobius international des Multimedias Competition for CD-ROM Alphabet, Paris, France
1998 Bologna Ragazzi Special Award
1997 Johanes Gutenberg Prize, Leipzig, Germany
1993 Graphic Prize Fiera di Bologna for Children
1992 The Hans Christian Andersen Awards
1991 The Most Beautiful Books, Vienna, Austria
1965 BIB Grand Prix

color playing (Grun, Rot, Alle, Ravensburger Buchverlag Otto Maire , 1992)

This book, which is full of vivid and various colors, is a story about a somber snail which wants to have colors and a frog which shows several colors to the snail in fantastic way with color magic. The color magic of the frog is consisted of three color board thus readers can combine the colors personally. In addition, this book has holes here and there in each pages and it is partly available to open the paper. This composition is more than simple playing and it suggest readers to communicate with the book and help them to discover hot and cold colors and to find the feeling of colors which have richness, humane emotions.

Flying (Tour a Tour, Editions Nord-Sud, 1995)

After listening to the secret conversations of two tower, animals can fly with balloons and some animals can fly without balloons. Finally, everyone knows the secret.

Cinderella (Cendrillon, Charles Perrault , Minedtion, 2009)

This is a new reading of Charles Perrault's Cinderella by Kveta Pacovska's unique eye. A red color stands out and reader can meet new Cinderella with original production methods such as collage, silver foil print, new coating skill and etc.

The Little Match (Das Madchen Mit Den Schwefelholzchen, Hans Christian Andersen, Minedtion, 2005)

This is a new reading of Andersen's work which reflects Kveta Pacovska's progressive and experimental style very well. The scene expressed by scratches looks like a scribbling of children and she expressed a pitiful sight of the little match with silver foil print and atypical shapes. The readers, who are familiar with Andersen's classical pictures, will be surprised with her brilliant and original expression.

Little Red Riding Hood (Rotkappchen, Bruder Grimm, Minedtion, 2007)

The original work of this book is written by Grimms and Kveta Pacovska expressed the wolf more interesting in this book. Above all, the expression for the changes of places and time is very unique. Collage is mainly used and special print techniques such as star colored print and silver foil print were used here and these make this book as an aesthetically valuable work of art itself.

color playing (betterbook, 2000 / Grun, Rot, Alle, Ravensburger Buchverlag, 1992)
number playing (betterbook, 2000 / Eins, funf, viele, Ravensburger Buchverlag, 1990)
shape playing (betterbook, 2000 / Rund und eckig, Ravensburger Buchverlag, 1994)
day playing (betterbook, 2000 / Rotrothorn, Ravensburger Buchverlag, 1999)
A flower is bloomed (betterbook, 2005 / ES WAR EINMAL EINE BLUME, Editions
Nord-sud, 1998)
The little match (betterbook, 2006 / Das Madchen Mit Den Schwefelholzchen, Hans
Christian Andersen, Minedtion, 2005)

2000

To celebrate the 2nd CJ picture book festival, Kveta Pacovska, a picture book author from the Czech republic, visited Korea. I really wanted to meet her not only she is really famous but also she still works very actively even though she is old, Now, she is 81 years old thus maybe it makes no difference to call her the greatest master who exists now.

After the press interview which continued quite long, when a young reporter said that she looked like a girl then she smiled shyly. Was it rude if I said that deep wrinkles on her face and hands looked very gorgeous and her voice, gesture and eyes were really lovely?

The meeting with Michael Neugebauer, the representative of Minedition ( www.minedition.com) was a decisive role which made the famous graphic designer Kveta Pacovska to a world-famous picture book author. Since their first meeting in 1985, they has been interacting continuously. Her works are still regarded difficult experimental picture books in Korea however in 1985 when her book was published in Europe at the first, the response was the same. However, she published the book daringly and it took 20 years being accepted in Europe thus on the contrary we can say that her popularity is spreading out faster in Korea.

She usually like to take a walk. When she walks, she can think deeply and get good ideas and inspirations. She wanted to make children feel the secret pleasure of picture books and feel a desire to keep a picture book which they read in their childhood as an art piece and I think her dream has already come true as her 20 year old first picture book became a classic now. Her picture books were published by Betterbook in Korea but the production process was too dedicated and expensive thus those were produced in Germany and now 'color playing' left only 30 and it is impossible to produce more. Can we meet her sold-out picture books again someday?

She is also famous for a poster work. It is sometimes sold in 100 Euro depending on its value. I felt grateful to her for her posters with autograph. I felt a strong force as if it said that a real poster was like this. I hope readers will visit the exhibition center and feel her posters which were maximized by print media.