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Child Creativity and the Visual Arts: From Secessionist Vienna to Postwar America
Child Creativity and the Visual Arts: From Secessionist Vienna to Postwar America
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Description
Tracing the dissemination of Secessionist ideas of child creativity – from their origination in early-20th century Vienna through to their eventual commodification in postwar America – this book highlights the central role that visual art has played in child education and in nurturing creativity in elementary and preschool curricula.
Taking the reader through the ideas of three artistic visionaries and their students – Franz Cižek, and Austrian-American émigrés Emmy Zweybrück and Viktor Löwenfeld – this book reveals how these ideas developed in postwar America through a focus on child-centered methods of 'learning by doing' in artistic practice. By centring the visual arts as a vital educational medium, we see how these teachings have been popularized as a means of nurturing creativity in childhood.
Across three chapter length case studies, interspersed with three 'mini chapters' on the reception of each artist-educator's radical teachings in the American education system, Child Creativity and the Visual Arts provides new interpretations into the impact of these three luminaries' differing philosophies on a broader program of socio-political activism in the USA. Drawing on previously untapped archival and primary source materials, it blends deep material culture analysis with narrative elements to present a compelling account of the unrecognized influence of émigré art pedagogy on progressive, international art education. In doing so, it provides fresh transregional and thematic perspectives on early-1900s Vienna as a hotbed of creative and cultural experimentation and 'mecca' of progressive art education.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Franz Cižek and the 'Discovery' of Child Art in Secessionist Vienna
2. Mada Primavesi: Folk Art, Modernism and the Question of a Cižek Style
3. Selling the Cult of the Creative Child: Emmy Zweybrück and the Commodification of Child Creativity
4. Midcentury Modernism, Race and DIY Culture: The Design Partnership of Nora and Emmy Zweybrück and Ray and Charles Eames
5. Viktor Lowenfeld: Creative Practice, Creative Intelligence and Educating the 'Whole Child' in a Fragmented World
Afterword: Craft Kits, Coloring Books and Children's Art Exhibitions in the Shadow of the Present
Notes
Index
Product details
Published | 24 Jul 2025 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 264 |
ISBN | 9781350456815 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
Illustrations | 70 colour illus. |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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The strength of Brandow-Faller's study lies in its ability to yoke together disparate cultural realms-Secessionist Vienna and postwar American childhood, and vastly successful designers and pedagogues with those largely forgotten-to reveal surprising and fascinating points of connection.
Laura Morowitz, Associate Professor of Art History at Wagner College, New York, USA
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A deeply informed examination of three visionary art educators from Vienna-Franz Cizek, Emmy Zweybruck, and Viktor Lownfeld-and their profound influence on progressive art education in the United States.
Ellen Winner, Professor Emerita, Psychology & Neuroscience, Boston College, USA
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Insightful and compelling, this book draws on previously unexamined sources to explore how three educators disseminated, popularized, and commodified ideas of child art from the Vienna Secession to mid-century modernism.
Mary Ann Stankiewicz, Emerita Professor of Art Education, Penn State University, USA
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This book brilliantly reframes the legacy of Vienna 1900 by highlighting its significant transnational impact beyond the visual arts, recovering the lasting effects of ideas around child creativity that we can still find in our homes today.
Julia Secklehner, Research Fellow, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia

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