Hans Christian Andersen.
Thumbelina. Second Edition
A reissuing of Andersen’s fairy tale with new illustrations by the artist Alexey Buldakov.
Thumbelina was one of the first fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen. Almost two hundred years after it was first published, the Russian artist Alexey Buldakov found many subjects in the work that resonate with his own practice and with contemporaneity in general. In Buldakov’s interpretation, this fairy tale about a little girl born in a flower bud who travels through different worlds becomes a story of the interaction of species: beasts, animals, insects, plants, and people. Buldakov illustrates the characters in the book with careful precision, as though for a textbook on natural history or a botanical album—his drawings of the barn swallow and rhe May beetle, the star-nosed mole and the toad, of multi-coloured tulips and of water lilies are executed with scientific attention.
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All photos: Olga Pogorelova
Alexey Buldakov (b. 1980) is an artist and anthropologist. He is a participant in Avdey Ter-Oganyan’s School of Contemporary Art project, a member of the Society of Radek group, and of the Laboratory for Urban Fauna association.
That’s a charming flower,” said the woman, and gave it a kiss on its pretty red and yellow petals.
But just as she kissed it the flower gave a loud crack and opened. You could see it was a real tulip, only right in the middle of it, on the green stool that is there, sat a tiny little girl, as delicate and pretty as could be. She was only a thumb-joint long, so she was called Thumbelina.
The illustrations draw on Buldakov’s characteristic “wet technique”: experiments with watercolour and ink on wet tracing paper create unforeseen artistic effects, like in the magical tale itself.
As the story progresses, readers may notice that Thumbelina almost doesn’t speak, that her feelings and thoughts are not described. For this reason, certain parts of the book have been highlighted in colour—the reader can pause over these and think: is what is taking place right, is Thumbelina being deprived of the opportunity to choose, do the other characters in the tale treat her well?
Thumbelina is a part of the