Ivanovs + "Album for Tiny Tots" April 05
This sturdy cardboard book is an attempt by twelve excellent Latvian artists, including Ritums Ivanovs, to talk to very young children in the language of art. Simultaneously it doubles as an album of contemporary Latvian art which their parents might find interesting as well
The compilers of the little book have selected vivid, stylistically different works by Helēna Heinrihsone, Līga Purmale, Ritums Ivanovs, Elita Patmalniece, Flēra Fedjukova, Auce Biele, the SAIM, Elf, ZAI and Četri groups of graffiti artists, Otto Zitmanis, Maija Kurševa, Karine Paronjants, Māra Viška and Andris Vītoliņš. There is a lot of similarity between the worldview of the artists and children. The album features both reproductions of the whole works of art and individual fragments, selected to depict a simple thing comprehensible to very young children, from the unusual vantage point of an artist – a cat, a bus, eyeglasses, a fish – and its name in five languages.
Liels un mazs ("Big and Small" in Latvian) is a children’s literature publishing house of Latvia with principles that include developing Latvian children’s literature and book art and publishing good translations, not cultivating a single specific trend, aiming to expand the territory of well-developed literary and visual taste, the publishing house also works to expand the range of literary perception with audio books, animation, music, multi-media projects, theatre performances, games and book festivals.