Picturebooks and Trojan Horses: The Nordic Picturebook as a Site for Artistic Experiment during the 1950s

The 1940s and 1950s was a dynamic period for the Nordic picturebook. A new generation of picturebook artists were reacting against the conventions that preceded them. The traditional narrative and aesthetic form of children’s literature was experienced as inadequate in the attempt to describe the modern world that the child was part of; children’s literature was regarded to be in need of a new language, new forms and “modern” images.