Collection: Hélène Guertik

Hélène Guertik (1897-1937) ranks among the most recognizable illustrators of the French children's series Père Castor in the 1930s. Born into an aristocratic family in Saint Petersburg, she studied at Vkhutemas, the Moscow workshops that taught fine and applied arts side by side. After the revolution she left Russia and reached Paris through Yalta, Constantinople, and Nice. Between 1932 and 1937 Guertik produced ten albums for Père Castor, six of them colouring books. Her style is instantly readable: confident contour lines, pared-down silhouettes, and flat colour planes inherited from the Russian avant-garde. Her subjects came from nature: fruit, vegetables, birds, farm and sea animals.

At Art Punch you will find а selection of her illustrations as high-quality prints on art paper or gallery-wrapped cotton canvas. Graphic work from the 1930s that sits naturally in a contemporary interior: a bright kitchen, a sunlit dining room, a Scandinavian nursery.