Esopovi Baïky (Ukrainian Aesop's Fables)

Abstract

This seems to be an earlier collaboration among a team whose work was published by the same company in 1990. Again, the art is typified by a classical bent and by geometric patterns, often echoing those of classical Greek art. A first sign of this tendency comes on the right-hand title-page, when a crow is caught in the wool of a sheep that is almost rectangular, and whose fleece is depicted by circular maze swirls. This work seems to have been based on a Greek book published by Papademetriou in Athens in 1956. As the closing T of C indicates, there are some sixty fables here on 123 pages. An unusual feature of the book is that its illustrations are four pairs of two-page spreads, one page of which is colored. The colored first page of the second is the verso of the colored second page of the first. Examples are the fallen charioteer and Hercules and the Carter between 31 and 34. Are these perhaps two phases of the same story? Again, between 47 and 50, we may have two phases of the story of the war horse turned farm horse, who is asked to go back to war again and begs not to. Between 79 and 82, who is that fox who drives the chariot and is then sent packing? Does the set between 111 and 114 depict the story of the lion and ass hunting together? The colored image here of three men running from the lion may be the best piece of artwork in this curious book. The front cover has a clever mirroring of fighting goats by fighting men in the same position.