The Imaginative World of Eleonore Grant
In 2021, the Volkskundemuseum Wien received a small collection of handmade, imaginatively illustrated booklets and little books as a donation. The images in these small-format works were created by Eleonore Grant, an aunt of the donor. Produced around 1945, the unique items were intended as personal gifts from the artist, born in 1930, to her family.
The 17 originally illustrated booklets in the collection complement the museum’s existing holdings of personally produced picture books made for private use. The donation also included an illustrated calendar and ten loose sheets with watercolour and ink drawings. In the imaginative stories and images of these carefully crafted individual works, personified flowers and insects as well as humanoid mythical creatures play a central role. With her small booklets, Eleonore Grant shared moments of joy in a period when her life was shaped by war and displacement.
This article will be published in English soon.