Biography

Personal details

Born: 16 November 1916, Prague, Czechoslovakia
Died: 1980, Munich?, Germany

There are few other details about his personal life, other than that he was married with one son, Dusan Pedro.

Education & career

According to cover notes in Stone is Not Cold, Sasek trained as an architect in Prague because his parents didn't approve of him becoming a painter. However he studied for some time at the l'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He escaped from Prague in 1948 and settled in Munich (he claimed he would be happy anywhere and ended up in Munich because his wife's work was there). From 1951-57 he worked for Radio Free Europe before starting on the This Is series, with This is Paris.

Works

Books

He produced 18 books in the This is series, as well as three other books which he wrote and illustrated: Benjamin a tisíc morskych dasu Kapitána Barnabáse (1947), Stone is Not Cold (1961) and Mike and the Modelmakers (1970). He also illustrated at least four other books: Eduard Petiska's Sedm mamlasu (1950), Willhelmina Femmster Jashimski's Letters from Pompeii (1963), Max Colpet's Zoo ist Das Leben (1974) and a 1967 pamphlet by Effie Lee Morris called See the city! A beginner's guide to San Francisco.

There may well be other books, so if you know of any please get in touch. I also read somewhere that he worked for a publishing house in Prague early in career so presumably he was an illustrator before he became an author in his own right.

See full Bibliography with pages for each book.

Films

4 films were produced from the This is series. See Films for more detail.

Paintings

In Stone is Not Cold Sasek indicates that he regarded his paintings as "his major work" He said the paintings are "very gray and black - very sad, as life is". It is not clear what has happened to these paintings, or how long he concentrated on his painting (at the time Stone is Not Cold was published, the This is series was in its infancy and Sasek himself later admitted he only planned to do three books in the series (This is Paris, This is London and This is Rome) so it's difficult to know if his painting career was overtaken by events.

Despite a lot of digging I have never found any reference to his paintings, only to his books, but I have seen lithographs for sale from time to time on ebay. The ones I have seen have always been black and white, but they didn't look too sad!

Awards

New York Times Choice of Best Illustrated Books of the Year, 1959 for This is London.
New York Times Choice of Best Illustrated Books of the Year, 1960 for This is New York.
Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book Award, 1961 for This is New York.
International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honor List 1979 for This is the United Nations.
Award for Excellence, Society of Illustrators
Annual National Exhibition, New York, 1960
The Leyton Prize, London, 1961.
Best book of the year for Loisirs Jeunes, 1962 and 1965