Google Salutes Mary Blair

Today’s Google Doodle salutes the wonderful Disney artist, Mary Blair.

My favorite moment in the documentary Walt & El Grupo, about a trip to South America that Walt Disney and his colleagues took just before America entered WWII, is when Mary Blair invents what would become the defining style for Disney’s next decade.  Mary Blair and her husband Lee, both talented artists and designers, had almost indistinguishable styles before they left on the trip.  But something she saw on that tour inspired her to develop a more stylized, simplified, colorful, approach to design, as shown in the tribute book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.  The modernity of the images in films like “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland” was due to her influence, which can also be seen throughout the theme parks in rides like “It’s A Small World.”