The story of Pop-ups at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair

“Pop-up show: the magic inside books,” an exhibition of seventy paper wonders that trace the history of three-dimensional books The Bologna Children’s Book Fair has always been able to gather together the many souls of publishing for children and young people.

Among the thousands of books that are published each year around the world some are capable of creating magical and spectacular dimensions: these are the three-dimensional books or, to use the term that has defined them since 1932, pop-ups. The 54th edition of the Children’s Book Fair will dedicate to these books the exhibition “Pop-up show: the magic inside books”. Pop-up books have a long history: the first titles were published in Europe in the second half of the 1800s in order to recreate the optical illusions that could be admired in theatrical diaramas and pinhole cameras.

The exhibition “Pop-up show: the magic inside books” traces some of the important milestones in this story, from the first texts published in 1800 to the great maestros of printing such as Ernest Nister and Raphael Tuck and Sons, to the books created in the 1970s. From the collection of “The Book has Three Dimensions Centre” in Forlì, seventy books are on display in this exhibition, curated by Massimo Missiroli and Matteo Faglia. Through the exhibited pages it is possible to observe the changes and the evolution in threedimensional constructions over time and the innovations that have made these paper sculptures increasingly complex and fascinating: from the first publications in which the term pop-up was used (Pinocchio “with pop-up illustrations”), to the books produced in 1933 with the Disney characters, passing to the English books of Giraud, nick-named “the wizard” for the complex constructions that he was able to skilfully position in his books.

The exhibition offers a rapid overview of the most important productions. One section is dedicated to the work of Vojtêch Kubaŝta, author who, thanks to his extraordinary ability to blend illustration with paper construction techniques to great effect, created during the 1960s some of the most stunning books from that period. To this day his contribution remains unrivalled.

Constructions hidden between the folds of a book, ready to explode on opening, to astonish with their ingenious complexity and then fold away to disappear once again, with extreme precision, with each turn of the page: “Pop-up show: the magic inside books” is an exhibition capable of telling the story to a public of professionals that come from all over the world to animate the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, of the fascination of these publications, the stars of the history of publishing.