Eric Carle’s Modernist Inspirations — The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, 19 September 2026 – 5 September 2027
Photo: John Phelan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Before The Very Hungry Caterpillar there was a schoolteacher in Germany who showed a boy the paintings the Nazi regime had banned. Eric Carle (1929–2021) grew up in Stuttgart, and that early encounter with the forbidden modernists stayed with him for life. Eric Carle’s Modernist Inspirations at The Carle in Amherst puts his picture-book illustrations beside the artists who formed his eye: Anni Albers, Marc Chagall, Sonia Delaunay, Shizuo Fujimori, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Fernand Léger, August Macke, René Magritte, Franz Marc and Pablo Picasso.
Two movements stand out: the Bauhaus, whose discipline of colour and form Carle admired, and Der Blaue Reiter, the Munich group of Marc, Macke and Klee whose animals and saturated colour are the nearest thing in the history of painting to a Carle collage. The exhibition, with more than sixty works according to the museum’s announcement, is curated by Isabel Ruiz Cano and designed by Theory One. It is shown in two rotations, so that visitors returning after March 2027 will find a changed selection.
“We are thrilled to take a deep dive into Eric Carle’s artistic development through the artists and art movements that inspired him,” said Jennifer Schantz, the museum’s executive director, when the show was announced.
Practical details
- Dates: 19 September 2026 – 5 September 2027. First rotation to 28 February 2027; gallery closed 1–5 March 2027; second rotation from 6 March 2027
- Where: West Gallery, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA 01002, United States
- Organised by: The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; curator Isabel Ruiz Cano
- Admission: tickets through the museum’s shop; member benefits apply
Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition for readers who follow the Bauhaus and German Expressionism. It is an unusual angle on both: the modern movement seen through the one art form — the picture book — that reaches almost every child.
📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of events: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photo