Dick Bruna's father, A. W. Bruna, directed the family-owned publishing company
Bruna, with his brother
Henk Bruna. His father's intentions were for Bruna to follow in his footsteps, but Bruna had different plans and wanted to be an artist. He traveled to London and lived for a while in Paris, where he fell under the influence of
Fernand Léger,
Pablo Picasso, and especially
Henri Matisse. Back in the Netherlands he attended the
Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam but soon quit; he said afterwards that he had no talent as a painter and could not draw perspective. In 1955, while on family holiday, he saw a rabbit hopping around and later made attempts to draw it, thereby creating "Nijntje" ("Miffy" in English), the way a Dutch child might say the diminutive (). Bruna illustrated over 2,000 covers and over 100 posters for the family business, A.W. Bruna & Zoon. But when the Amsterdam company Art Unlimited decided to publish Poster & Postcards following Roby Bellemans's traveling international exhibitions with Dutch and other children book illustrators, Dick Bruna approached Roby about this collaboration and decided to let Art Unlimited publish his “Nijntje” cards. His most recognized illustrations were for the Zwarte Beertjes (English: little black bears) series of books, including
The Saint,
James Bond,
Simenon, and
Shakespeare. He has said that the Japanese character
Hello Kitty was copied from Miffy. In 2014, Bruna announced his retirement, after which the rights to the Miffy character were not to be sold. In March 2016 he was awarded the
Max Velthuijs-prijs. Bruna died of natural causes in his sleep in Utrecht on 16 February 2017 at the age of 89. == Bibliography (as children's author) ==