Nancy Ekholm Burkert

Nancy Ekholm Burkert is an American artist and illustrator, first known for her 1961 illustrated book, the original edition of James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Her most celebrated work, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1972), won the New York Times Notable Book Award and a Caldecott medal.

Her early work demonstrated a command of shading and texture through pencil and charcoal, in addition to her usual media of pen and ink combined with colored pencil and watercolor. Beginning with The Nightingale and concluding with Snow White, her mastery of light, shadow and depth combined Renaissance chiaroscuro with an Oriental awareness of space in settings that were realistic in detail, yet also fanciful and timeless in content. Her later work continued this emphasis on intense, intimate detail, revealing a passion for the complexity and variety of life.

Burkert was born in Sterling, Colorado on February 16, 1933, and moved with her family to Wisconsin in 1945. She married Robert Burkert, a professor of art at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and has two children.

In 1982, she was co-author of a museum catalog for the Milwaukee Art Museum, on the Wisconsin artist John Wilde. In 2003, she was subject of an exhibition at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA.

Illustrated works

• Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach (1961)
• Natalie Savage Carlson, Jean-Claude’s Island (1963)
• Meindert de Jong, Big Goose and the Little White Duck (1963)
• Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale (1965)
• John Updike, Child’s Calendar (1965)
• Edward Lear and Ogden Nash, The Scroobious Pip (1968)
• Hans Christian Andersen, The Fir Tree (1970)
• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs (1972)
• David Larkin, ed., The Art of Nancy Ekholm Burkert (1977)
• Emily Dickinson, Acts of Light (1980)
• Valentine and Orson (1989), written and illustrated

Awards

• 1972 New York Times Notable Book: Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs
• 1973 Caldecott Award, Honor Book: Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs
• 1989 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award: Valentine and Orson
• 1995 Wisconsin Library Association Wisconsin Notable Authors

External links

• 1995 Wisconsin Notable Authors Bio
• Eric Carle Museum exhibit

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Name	Burkert, Nancy Ekholm
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Date of birth	1933
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