Bruna, creator of Miffy, dies at 89
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dick Bruna, the Dutch “spiritual father” of Miffy, the white rabbit who enchanted millions of young children around the world for more than half a century, has died at age 89, his publisher announced Friday.
Decades before Instagram made square images immensely popular, Bruna understood their power. For years, his Miffy books were printed in a square format.
“He thought that size was really good for two little children’s hands, and he loved the visual impact, too,” longtime friend Marja Kerkhof, of his Dutch publisher Mercis, said in a telephone interview.
Bruna “passed away peacefully in his sleep” Thursday night in Utrecht, Kerkhof said.
The simplicity of Bruna’s charac- ters drew adoration not only from children but also from adult art lovers. Amsterdam’s venerable Rijksmuseum put on a show featuring his work in 2015.
He wrote and illustrated 124 books, but Miffy, known in the Netherlands as Nijntje, a contraction of the Dutch word for rabbit, was far and away his most popular and best-known character.
Bruna created 32 books about the rabbit, which were translated into more than 50 languages and sold more than 85 million copies, Kerkhof said. The man his publisher described as Miffy’s “spiritual father” stopped drawing in 2011.