It’s been a couple years since Leo Dillon’s passing and I’ve been seeing his work float around Tumblr more often. Unfortunately, it’s usually uncredited, which is an absolute shame. Please don’t be the person who refuses to give credit where credit is due. Especially when it comes to such a brilliant, talented, deserving artist as Leo Dillon. Know who he is, know his work, know the impact he has had on Illustration, and celebrate him.
Leo Dillon passed away in March of 2012 from Lung cancer at age 79. He is best known for his Illustration work in Children’s Literature, though he has designed covers for countless Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Historical books, as well as album covers and posters. Leo Dillon worked solo, but also collaborated with his wife Diane Sorber throughout much of their careers. They met in 1954 at Parson’s school of Design in New York City, where their typical Art School competitiveness blossomed into love, and they married in 1957.
Leo Dillon was the first black man to win the Caldecott Medal (two years in a row, another first), and he’s also received a Hugo Award, a NAACP Image Award, a Balrog Award, and countless others.
An excerpt from the New York Times article on his passing:
“The Dillons’ work was characterized by stylistic diversity, with influences ranging over African folk art, Japanese woodcuts, old-master paintings and medieval illumination.
It was also noteworthy for the diversity of the people it portrayed. This was especially striking in the 1970s, when the Dillons began illustrating for children: until then, the smiling faces portrayed in picture books had been overwhelmingly white.
Their emphasis on inclusion sprang from their experience as an interracial couple. As they often explained in interviews, after their son, Lee, was born in the 1960s, they surreptitiously colored the skin of characters in the picture books they bought him, recasting them as black, Hispanic and Asian.
The son of parents who had come to the United States from Trinidad, Lionel John Dillon Jr. was born in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn on March 2, 1933.
As a high school student, he was groomed for a career in commercial art. But his gifts were spotted by a teacher who realized, as Mr. Dillon later said, “that I could do more than illustrate Coke bottles” and steered him toward fine art.
He enlisted in the Navy so that he could attend art school afterward on the G.I. Bill. After three years’ service, he enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in New York.”
He is survived by his wife Diane and his son Lee Dillon (a talented artist in his own right). The Dillon’s latest book, “If Kids Ran the World” is scheduled for release in 2014.
A short list of books illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon: Aida, Earth Mother, Children of the Sun, The Race of the Golden Apples, The Porcelain Cat, The People could Fly, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, The Secret River, Pish, Posh Said Heironymus Bosch!
A short list of books written and illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon: Rap-A-Tap-Tap! Here’s Bojangles! Think of That!, Jazz on a Saturday, To Everything there is a Season, Mother Goose on the Loose.
Sources: Huff Post, New York Times, National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, Locus Online, Tor Books, The Horn Book, Wikipedia (for full list of books), and The Art of Leo & Diane Dillon blogspot
Such an amazing, beautiful, talented man. Thank you for all the inspiration.
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