Dirk Zimmer


Dirk "Dizi" Zimmer was a German artist and an illustrator and writer of American children's books.

Biography

Zimmer was born in Goslar in Lower Saxony. He grew up mostly in Hamburg, where he attended the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg from 1963 to 1968.

The German period

In 1965, he, with fellow artists Francesco Mariotti, Herman Prigann, Werner Nöfer, and Dieter Glasmacher, co-founded Cruizin 4, an art organisation best known for two events: the opening of the exhibition Cruizin 4 in the Gallery Mensch at Fischmarkt Hamburg-Altona and a performance at Cosinus, a pub in the university district. The Happening 1. World Record in Permanent Painting took place under medical, and specifically psychiatric care, by doctors of the University Hospital Eppendorf..
Under the moniker 'Dizi', Zimmer had a brief career as a painter during the German avant-garde movement and then turned to film-making, which he eventually dropped in the late 1970s to work as an illustrator for American publications including Crawdaddy, The New York Times, and The New-York Magazine. Over the years, both his paintings and illustrations were shown in private galleries in New York, Germany, Switzerland, and France.

The American period

His work as a children's book illustrator began after moving permanently to New York City in 1977. He also continued to exhibit his artwork and to be a presence in the New York art scene. He lived in a flat in John Street for a lengthy period of time. The only media contact with his homeland was through the German Boa Vista magazine, in which he first published vignettes, then later his written and illustrated short-story comic with the cryptically and untranslatable German title Die mysteriöse Schratzmichlöse. From 1978 to 2004 Zimmer published more than thirty children's books.
Zimmer moved to Barrytown, NY in the early 1980s, and later lived in the Rondout area of Kingston. He was a contributor and collaborator at the northern Dutchess quarterly AboutTown. He later moved to Tivoli, NY. In 1990, he was one of a small group of illustrators—including Natalie Babbitt, Maurice Sendak, Marc Simont and Barbara Cooney—whose work was featured in The Big Book for Peace, an anthology of 34 artists and writers.

Car accident and death

In Tivoli, on a walk to the river on the afternoon of September 21, 2008, Zimmer was struck by a car. He died from his injuries on September 26 at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He is survived by two sisters who live in Germany. The sequel of the book Egon, on which he was working at that time, was left unfinished. Egon, Zimmer's adventurous, furry alter ego, leaves the following note at the end of the book: "I am having a good time. I will be home some day but not until the show ends. Maybe soon."

Legacy

Zimmer's offbeat, sometimes grotesque, but always gentle humour made him much sought-after as an illustrator for "scary" picture books, two of which were included in the American Library Association Notable Book lists for children's books.
The Trick-Or-Treat Trap - the only book that he wrote and illustrated himself - was critically well received. The New York Times praised its "tongue-in-cheek" humour: "His pen has bite as he pictures a wonderfully wicked assortment of ornery little beings."

Books in cooperation

In German

In English

Books by himself

Awards, honours