Art Genius playing cards
Art Genius playing cards with illustrations by Rebecca Clarke and published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd, London, 2018.
This pack, dated June 2018, entitled Art Genius playing cards was published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd. of London. Each suit is devoted to a particular artistic genre or movement: Spades portray Abstract Expressionism; Hearts represent Pop Art; Clubs represent Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; while the Diamonds represent Surrealism. Portraits/drawings of exponents of these different movements appear on each card, including two Jokers (representing Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso). The illustrations have been produced by American artist Rebecca Clarke and the freelance writer Federico Florian. See the box►



Above: Art Genius playing cards published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd, London, 2018.
NOTE: This review first appeared in the EPCS Newsletter, no. 124, February 2019, p. 19.

By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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