Leo Politi

Atiglio Leoni Politi (November 21, 1908 – March 26, 1996) was an American artist and author who wrote and illustrated some 20 children's books, as well as Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, intended for adults. His works often celebrated cultural diversity, and many were published in both English and Spanish.

Childhood

Politi was the younger of two children, born in Fresno, on November 21, 1908, to Italian-American parents Lodovico Politi and Mary Cazzola. Politi's sister, Marie Therese, was two years older.

Politi was transported to Italy at the age of seven — in an "Indian Chief suit," via transcontinental railroad and ocean liner — and grew up, constantly drawing, in his mother's native village of Broni near Milan.

Lodovico left the family to take a job as a cobbler in Piacenza. Marie went to live with a poor aunt who operated a roadside inn. Politi was placed in a boarding home with an elderly woman and her daughter. Politi loved Broni, a deep affection that remained for the rest of his life. In Broni, he began to develop his artistic sense, drawing sketches of village life.

By 1920, the Politis reunited and moved to London where Politi was exposed to the culture and cosmopolitan lifestyle that Broni could never offer. On weekends, Leo and Marie packed a lunch basket and along with hundreds of other poor children lined up at a London theater to watch live shows and Charlie Chaplin films. Politi devoured everything that London had to offer a boy. He wandered through the city's museums to view the works of Vincent van Gogh and other masters.

After one year, the Politi family returned to Broni where Leo began studying art on a six-year scholarship at the Superior Institute of Fine Arts—also known as the National Art Institute—at the Royal Palace at Monza near Milan.

Early career

In 1931, Politi, at the age of 22, left Italy for California. Passing through the Panama Canal he discovered the exotic beauty of Central America. He sketched the things that he saw and small stories began to bubble up within him.

He was attracted to the Mayan culture of the region and developed a palette that served as his core of colors throughout the 1930s and '40s. Politi later wrote of his technique: "(I) developed an ochre yellow, burnt sienna and a number of brown tints symbolic of the warmth and earthy qualities of the life and vegetation of the tropical Central American jungle. I also used a lively blue-green symbolic of the water, sky and in small spots for precious stones used then in their ornaments as jade – all elements inherent to the Maya civilization."

Artist Buckley Mac-Gurrin, an art critic for the literary film magazine Script published by writer and artist Rob Wagner, wrote in a cover story of Politi in 1940 that "Leo became proficient in the use of many media – oil, watercolor, wood-carving, wood engraving, lithography, book illustration; he had a very fine artistic education. His training was modern as opposed to academic; it tended to develop originality rather than subservient to the art forms of bygone eras. His own artistic philosophy drew him toward the genuine and the earthy; toward people whose contact with the soil was still fresh, intimate, satisfying."

Selected books Little Pancho (1938), his first book Pedro, the Angel of Olvera Street (1946), a Caldecott runner-up Juanita (1948), a Caldecott runner-up Song of the Swallows (1950), Caldecott Medal winner A Boat for Peppe (1950) Little Leo (1951) The Butterflies Come (1957) Bunker Hill, Los Angeles: Reminiscences of Bygone Days (1964) Piccolo's Prank (1965) Moy Moy (1960) Mr. Fong's toy shop (1978) The Three Miracles (1946) The Noble Doll (1961) Mieko (1969) Rosa (1963)