EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

2 Fortunino Matania Peter Richardson looks at the work of an artist, whose ability to plunge his audience into the heart of historical events, with the sureness of a reportage photographer, was second to none. In 1963, the eighty-two year-old illustrator Fortunino Matania was struggling to meet a deadline. Despite his advanced age, he was still busy working on commissions and, although his client list had contracted, the expectations placed upon him were as great as ever. His primary client was the visionary editor Leonard Matthews, who had long been a passionate champion of Matania’s work, and had ensured that Matania would have as much work from him as he could accommodate. When Matthews had launched his ground-breaking children’s weekly Look and Learn a year earlier, Matania had been one of the first illustrators he had secured for the project. Look and Learn was the ideal vehicle for Matania’s talents, as its primary focus was to inform and entertain children, and historical subject ABOVE: Matania uses a formalized grid-like design to counterpoint the voluptuous curves of a Greek runner tying on her shoes. FACING PAGE: German Uhlans attacking a hastily thrown together Belgian barricade in 1914.