German painter, architect and graphic designer. In German-speaking countries, Carlo Böcklin owes his reputation for the most part to making copies of the works of his father, the painter Arnold Böcklin, author of Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead). The work of Carlo Böcklin and Beate Bonus (text), Kasperl-Bilder-Bücher (Kasperl Illustrated Books), published in four volumes in 1911, contain easy to perform plays. They show the influence of the Jahrmarktskaspertheater (Kasper performances at fairs), but the bawdiness of those is attenuated by Böcklin’s artistic touch. Accompanying these illustrated volumes of plays, a set of papier-mâché puppets designed by Böcklin were sold in 1911, followed in 1920 by a series of wooden puppets. In the 1910s and 1920s, these books and puppets by Carlo Böcklin were considered a valuable contribution to the reform of the puppet theatre in Germany. Yet because of the emerging success of the Hohnsteiner Handpuppenspiele (see Max Jacob), they subsequently sank into oblivion.
(See Germany.)
Bibliography
- Bonus, Beate. Kasper-Bilder-Bücher. Vols. 1-3. In digitized form on the website of the Universitätsbibliothek Braunschweig einsehbar [University Library Brunswick] (www.digibib.tu-bs.de)
- Skaarup, Lilo. Om Mester Jakel og hans familie [About Mester Jakel and His Family]. Copenhagen: Institute of Theatrical Science, Copenhagen University, 1992.
- Weinkauff, Gina. “Obwohl nicht kasperlemäßig im Sinne des niederdeutschen Kasperlespiels” [Although not standard Kasperle theatre in the sense of the Lower German Kasperle play]. Der Anteil von Carlo Böcklin und Beate Bonus an der Entwicklung des künstlerischen Handpuppenspiels in Deutschland [The Contribution of Carlo Böcklin and Beate Bonus to the Development of Artistic Hand Puppetry in Germany]. Die Spiele der Puppe. Ed. Manfred Wegner. Köln: Prometh Verlag, 1989.