Original artwork, of pages 4 and 5, for the book Make Way for the Thruway, written by Caroline Emerson with illustrations by Tibor Gergely, and published by Golden Press in New York, New York, in 1961.
Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, Tibor Gergely (1900-1978) was captivated by art and culture at a young age. Known as a graphic illustrator and a caricature artist, Gergely’s early works documented Jewish life before the rise of Hitler. By 1939 the political situation in Europe was dire, and Gergely and his wife immigrated to America. They settled in New York and his love affair with the city never waned. He was enchanted with his new life in a postwar New York that included skyscrapers, rushing traffic and the excitement of life in the big city.
By 1940 Gergely was working for the American Artists and Writers Guild and became a popular illustrator for Little Golden Books, providing drawings for more than seventy books, including Tootle, Five Little Firemen, and Scuffy the Tugboat. His illustrations for The Taxi that Hurried and Make Way for the Thruway reflect the post war prosperity and idealism of the 1950s, including his portrayal of the celebrated automobile and the expanding highway system, both destined to bring dramatic social and cultural changes to American life.