Leo Bensemann: the Fantastica drawings

The Caxton Press knew it had a remarkable publication on its hands with Leo Bensemann's Fantastica: 13 Drawings. The usually temperamental cylinder press had 'behaved with unwonted docility', and it was proudly claimed that 'nothing quite like these drawings has appeared in New Zealand'.

First published in an edition of 125 in 1937, Fantastica has come to represent one of the highpoints of the book arts in New Zealand.

Bensemann's allegiance to the realms of the imagination and European cultural traditions set Fantastica apart from the landscape-based realism that dominated New Zealand art through the 1930s.

These intense, hypnotic drawings are peopled with mad princes, little witches and enchanted forests. Their equally rich artistic and literary heritage stretches from renaissance portraiture to German romanticism and the Japanese woodcuts of Hokusai, via Arabian Nights, the Brothers Grimm and Doctor Faustus.

The original pen and ink Fantastica drawings were purchased by the Alexander Turnbull Library in 2003. The metal blocks used in the printing of the book were subsequently donated to the Library by the Bensemann family.

An exhibition at the National Library Gallery that opened in December 2008 brought together the complete set of Fantastica drawings for the very first time. All of these drawings are shown in this web-based version of the exhibition.

The Fantastica book relies on a complex interrelationship between image and text. This online exhibition follows the logic of the book by presenting each image with its accompanying text drawn from a literary source.

The National Library would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Bensemann family and the Holloway Press.