This exhibition is the largest retrospective of Maurice Sendak’s work to date. Its title, taken from his beloved book Where the Wild Things Are, signals the magic and all the beauty and mischief he generated over his six-decade career.
Largely self-taught, artist Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) began illustrating books professionally in 1947. Over the next several decades, he expanded the boundaries of the traditional picture book. Often inspired by great writers and artists of the past, he constantly developed new visual languages.
In the late 1970s, he began designing productions for the stage, collaborating with some of the greatest writers, directors, and composers of his time. Sendak was an illustrator, a writer, a scenographer, and a costume designer. But first and foremost, he was an exceptional artist.
This exhibition is co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art in close partnership with The Maurice Sendak Foundation.
Unless otherwise noted, all works are by Maurice Sendak and on loan from The Maurice Sendak Foundation.
Chapter 1
Maurice Sendak's Universe
From the moment I drew my first drawing there was never any question, never any doubt in my young mind that I wanted to be an artist.
Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, and had two older siblings, Natalie and Jack. He credited his upbringing with shaping him as an artist and as an individual. Throughout his career, he incorporated images inspired by his family and his Brooklyn neighborhood, along with references to pop culture and his Jewish heritage, into his books and theatrical productions.
Sendak often talked about early unhappy experiences growing up and his bouts with childhood illnesses. When he was sick in bed, he watched kids playing in the street and sketched what he saw out his window. His father was a wonderful storyteller who did not shy away from supposedly grownup themes of love, death, and survival. Later, Sendak embraced this approach in his work, steadfastly and honestly exploring kids’ fears and anxieties—which may not be so different from those of adults.
They’re all a kind of caricature of me.
Final Art for Kenny's Window
1956
Ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
Self-Portraits
Maurice Sendak saw himself in almost every character and story he created. Starting in the late 1940s, Sendak made traditional self-portraits, depicting himself in a realistic style. As his book illustration career grew, he also created characters that resembled him, even if they weren’t grown up. Their actions, too, echoed a lot of Sendak’s own behavior: Max making mischief in Where the Wild Things Are, Mickey seeking adventure in In the Night Kitchen, Baby being stubborn in Higglety Pigglety Pop!
Sendak honored his parents with these intimate portraits. Sadie and Philip Sendak immigrated to Brooklyn from Poland at the start of World War I. Sendak described his mother as being “never stingy toward her own family or relations … but she was always worried.” Philip was an animated storyteller, often making up bedtime stories of the old country. These tales, Sendak said, constituted his first real inspiration.
Mother Hubbard
About 1950
Mixed media
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
Little Red Riding Hood
1948
Mixed media
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
Maurice Sendak Studio Apartment Interview, 1966
Weston Woods Productions
Duration: 36 sec., with sound.
Produced by Morton Schindel at Weston Woods Studios. Courtesy Objet D'Art
Listen to Maurice Sendak, at age 38, describe how he and his brother, Jack, once aspired to become toy makers and created a series of handmade toys based on popular fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
Simply, childhood for me was shtetl life in Brooklyn, full of Old World reverberations—and Walt Disney, and the occasional trip to the incredibly windowed ‘uptown’ that was New York—America!
Final Art for In Grandpa’s House
1985
Ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
Jewish Heritage
Although Maurice Sendak was not religious, he felt a strong connection to Jewish history and traditions. His father, Philip, thrilled his children with stories rooted in folklore and shtetl life (Jewish villages in Eastern Europe). In 1985, Sendak illustrated and published his father’s tales as In Grandpa’s House.
He incorporated aspects of this heritage into many of his works. For example, to illustrate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, Sendak used old photographs of his relatives in Poland who he never met. He said, “All those dead Jews in my family—those who died in Hitler’s holocaust, or after lives of hardship and deprivation, had always been very close and important to me.”
Portrait of Izzie Fiedler
1949
Oil on Masonite
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
First Artistic Training
Maurice Sendak hated school and always claimed he taught himself to paint and draw. However, when he was in his early 20s he did take evening classes at the New York Art Students League, after working all day on window displays at the toy store FAO Schwarz. The war correspondent-illustrator John Groth taught the one class at the League that Sendak felt was worthwhile. It was Groth who encouraged him to leave school and learn by doing. According to Sendak, the older artist communicated “a sense of the enormous potential for motion, for aliveness in illustration … He himself … showed how much fun creating in it could be.”
Eugene David Glynn (1926–2007) was a psychiatrist, writer, art critic, and Sendak’s life partner beginning in the 1950s. Sendak depicted him here both in a formal portrait and in a moment of leisure. Glynn devoted his life to public health in New York, counseling patients, supervising psychiatric care, and training social workers. Sendak included these two pictures in Glynn’s posthumously published book, Desperate Necessity: Writings on Art and Psychoanalysis.
Fantasy Sketch: Untitled (Fish Boy)
1953
Ink on paper
© The Maurice Sendak Foundation
Fantasy Sketches
In the 1950s, Maurice Sendak developed a life-long practice in which he would listen to a piece of classical music by a composer such as Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert and challenge himself to draw a story before the last note sounded. These exercises, which he called “fantasy sketches,” allowed him to explore motion and animation and honed his artistic training. It also sparked ideas for later books like Nutshell Library and Where the Wild Things Are.
He said, “Music helped unravel my imaginary scenes; it pressed the button, turned the key, kept my pen moving across the paper.”
Authors: Maxwell Leigh Eidinhoff (born 1915) and Hyman Ruchlis (1913–1992)
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Atomics for the Millions
1947
Book
New York and London: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1947. © 1947 Maurice Sendak
Early Illustrations
Despite his “desperate loathing” for school, Sendak’s part-time job filling in the backgrounds of the famous comic strip Mutt and Jeff made him something of a celebrity with his schoolmates, and he got his first professional book illustration work as a result of one of his classes. He remembered, “The first book I illustrated was … for my physics teacher … He wrote a book which, I believe it’s true to say, was the first book explaining the atomic bomb to a layman, called Atomics for the Millions.”
Sendak was the art editor of The Legend, his senior class yearbook, and he contributed many illustrations to its pages and to the school’s literary magazine.
Exhibition Guide Chapters
- Introduction / Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Reading Room
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Epilogue
Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak has been co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art in partnership with The Maurice Sendak Foundation. It is curated by Jonathan Weinberg, PhD, Curator and Director of Research at The Maurice Sendak Foundation, and Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum.
This exhibition is presented by the Clarence V. Laguardia Foundation with additional support provided by the Tom Taplin Jr. and Ted Taplin Endowment, Bank of America, Jana and Fred Bartlit, Bernstein Private Wealth Management, Kathie and Keith Finger, Lisë Gander and Andy Main, the Kristin and Charles Lohmiller Exhibitions Fund, Sally Cooper Murray, John Brooks Incorporated, Kent Thiry & Denise O'Leary, an anonymous donor, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.
