posted on 22 Jun 2017

Wild Animals of the North by Dieter Braun

German-born artist Dieter Braun’s guide to some of the most magnificent animals in the Northern hemisphere is a truly beautiful book. Although the animals he has selected to draw all have a short paragraph to introduce their species, it’s really not the words you’re going to buy this book for.

The publisher, Flying Eye, really know how to put together a beautiful book and this certainly isn’t the first to come out of their growing stable of titles but it is, I think, one of the most immediately arresting and striking. It is, in fact, a companion to his earlier Wild Animals of the South which follows exactly the same format. Together these books make a stunning collection.

Wild Animals of the North which was first published in 2016 and it really showcases Braun’s considerable talents. His style is idiosyncratic – a blend of retro art deco and a sort of graphic minimalism that allows the form an essence of each animal to stand out without getting lost in fussy and unnecessary detail. I’ve seen the style described as ‘vintage’ but I don’t know how useful that term is. Braun clearly sees animals as aesthetic forms and he chisels out their features in an almost sculptural way. So whilst they may seem very stylised illustrations they do in fact capture something quintessential about the animal’s spirit as well as its physical presence.

Although Braun is an illustrator of books for children it’s clear his work has a much wider potential audience. The label of ‘illustration’ is almost certainly too narrow to capture the richness of the artwork and I think it’s pretty obvious that there are some strong influences at work here from Cubism and the Naïve Art school.

I rather like what the Posterlounge website has to say about Braun and his work:

To us, Dieter Braun is a sort of Christopher Columbus who never grew out of childhood, exploring the world with fresh eyes and capturing his discoveries for others to see. His love of animals, combined with a thirst for adventure, a spirit of discovery and the urge to share the diversity of fauna in all its wondrous facets with the rest of us – all of this makes him a children’s book illustrator par excellence. And it’s not just children’s eyes that light up; on the contrary, his imagery should excite young and old alike.

I’m certainly going to keep my eyes open for whatever projects Braun has lined-up for the future – he’s a rising star of book illustration and a very welcome one.

Terry Potter

June 2017