Louis Slobodkin

Louis Slobodkin was born in 1903 in Albany, New York. In 1918, he began a five-year course of study at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City, where he specialized in drawing and modeling. Slobodkin assisted in the studios of several well-known architectural sculptors before winning commissions of his own. His best-known work, Abe Lincoln, was created for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and became a point of controversy due to its size and stylized rendering of a young Lincoln. Later in life, Slobodkin became a successful children’s book illustrator, with over 80 publications and a Caldecott Medal awarded in 1944.