Today we celebrate Marie Blair, an artist, animator, and designer. She drove the design for Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Cinderella, and more. Blair’s unique approach is central to many aspects of Disney parks, including the innovative and influential color palette and neo-Art Deco design of It’s a Small World.
From the Christian Science Monitor:
“[Mary Blair’s] vibrant colors and stylized designs pervade Disney animated films from 1943 to 1953,” writes Mr. Canemaker. “Beneath her deceptively simple style, lies enormous visual sophistication and craftsmanship in everything from color choices to composition.”
Disney had a stable of amazing artists, “but where Mary Blair was unique was that the work that she did here at the studio was not only beautiful work, what she did went beyond the project into a pure art form,” says Michael Giaimo, art director on Disney’s “Pocahontas,” in an interview with the L.A. Times last week. “It became art. It became a statement unto itself.”
“Her most distinctive factor is that she is kind of showing us her soul,” Mr. Giaimo added. “It is not just slick commercial art, it is the combination of commercial and the personal in the artistic sense. She puts herself into her art work and it transcends the greatest of the Disney movies.”
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