Over the course of his prolific career, the subjects of Antonio Frasconi’s illustrations have ranged from the playful animals in his first book, “Twelve Fables of Aesop,” to a dictatorship’s torture victims in his magnum opus, “The Disappeared.”

As a result, he’s known both for entertaining and educating children and for powerful social commentary.

Frasconi is a technical master, perhaps the best woodcut artist of his generation, as evidenced in all of his various works.

But the collection currently on display at Phillips Exeter Academy’s Lamont Art Gallery reveals the magic particular to his children’s illustrations, which came directly out of a devotion to his own sons. 

The exhibition, “Into the Wood: Antonio Frasconi’s Art for Children,” includes original prints from picture books and other woodblocks, collages, and books published in small editions that are rarely available to the general public. It runs through Feb. 22.

The birth of Frasconi’s first child is seen as a turning point in his career, when he started focusing on creativity as a way to educate. One way was his accordion-style alphabet book with an animal carved into each letter. Reading it is made more difficult by the designs, but the artist was not concerned much with age appropriateness.   

His varied background led to his innovative bilingual children’s books, such as “See and Say: A Picture Book in Four Languages,” written in 1955.

Frasconi was born in 1919 in Uruguay to Italian parents, and emigrated to the United States in 1945 to study at The Art Students League of New York. Within 10 years, he established himself as one of the foremost graphic artists of the time.

He was supposedly disappointed that he was not hired by Disney, although his intricate woodcuts, unexpected characters and compositions, undertones of dark curiosity, and disregard for typical age appropriateness, may not have always been marketable to the masses.

Frasconi did, however, illustrate the work of Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Neruda, and freelanced for Fortune magazine, crafting his impressions of mines and wineries.

He personally put out more than 100 books, which were his preferred outlet. As the exhibition’s curators state, “For Antonio Frasconi, the book is truly a work of art and the artist is a voracious reader.”

His work defies expectations of the traditional book format, often melding text and image. The characters, while mostly true to life form, do more than illustrate a story. They have personality and energy that let the imagination go beyond the words on the page. 

Many of the block prints are black on white, and some also have one or two colors used sparingly. Along with clever composition that considers white space and eye movement, the lack of color calls attention to the detail in his carving and the human element in printing—the talent to make a lasting impression from simple pine and paper.

His collage work, on the other hand, takes a very different approach with cut or ripped bright layers of tissue paper and ink drawings. Though the exhibition is centered on his work for children, the extensive collection still shows off the impressive range of this artist.

Frasconi’s works are also found in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Museum.

The exhibit, which is free and open to the public through Feb. 22, was organized by The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The Lamont Gallery is located in the lower level of the Frederick R. Mayer Art Center in Exeter on Tan Lane, 603-777-3461