Lynd Ward

'Wild Pilgrimage' (Contemplation) — 'Story Without Words' Graphic Modernism

1932

Lynd Ward, 'Madman's Drum, Plate 41', wood engraving, 1930, edition small. Signed in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white tissue-thin Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (1 5/8 to 2 1/2 inches); a small paper blemish in the upper right margin, away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. A scarce, artist-printed, hand-signed proof impression before the published edition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches (140 x 95 mm); sheet size 9 5/8 x 7 1/8 inches (244 x 181 mm). From Lynd Ward’s book of illustrations without words, 'Madman’s Drum', Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, New York, 1930. Reproduced in 'Storyteller Without Words, the Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward', Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1974. ABOUT THE ARTIST Lynd Ward is acknowledged as one of America’s foremost wood engravers and book illustrators of the first half of the twentieth century. His innovative use of narrative printmaking as a stand-alone storytelling vehicle was uniquely successful in reaching a broad audience. The powerful psychological intensity of his work, celebrated for its dynamic design, technical precision, and compelling dramatic content, finds resonance in the literature of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Like these classic American writers, Ward was concerned with the themes of man’s inner struggles and the role of the subconscious in determining his destiny. An artist of social conscience during the Great Depression and World War II, he infused his graphic images with his unique brand of social realism, deftly portraying the problems that challenged the ideals of American society. The son of a Methodist preacher, Lynd Ward, moved from Chicago to Massachusetts at an early age. He graduated from the Teachers College of Columbia University, New York, in 1926, where he studied illustration and graphic arts. He married May Yonge McNeer in 1936 and left for Europe for their honeymoon in Eastern Europe. After four months, they settled in Leipzig, where Ward studied at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking. Inspired by Belgian expressionist artist Frans Masereel's graphic novel ‘The Sun,’ and another graphic novel by the German artist Otto Nückel, ‘Destiny,’ he determined to create his own "wordless" novel. Upon his return to America, Ward completed his first book, ‘God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts,’ published in 1929. ‘Gods’ Man’ was a great success for its author and publisher and was reprinted four times in 1930, including a British edition. This book and several which followed it, ‘Madman’s Drum,’ 1930, ‘Wild Pilgrimage...

Fritz Eichenberg, 'Simplicius’ Farewell To The World' from the suite 'The Adventurous Simplicissimus', wood engraving, 1977, artist's proof apart from the edition of 50. Signed in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 14 x 12 inches (356 x 305 mm); sheet size 17 1/2 x 15 inches (445 x 381 mm). Archivally sleeved, unmatted. ABOUT THIS WORK 'Simplicius Simplicissimus' (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch) is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in five books by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen published in 1668, with the sequel Continuatio appearing in 1669. The novel is told from the perspective of its protagonist Simplicius, a rogue or picaro typical of the picaresque novel, as he traverses the tumultuous world of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War. Raised by a peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons. He is adopted by a hermit living in the forest, who teaches him to read and introduces him to religion. The hermit also gives Simplicius his name because he is so simple that he does not know his own name. After the death of the hermit, Simplicius must fend for himself. He is conscripted at a young age into service and, from there, embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, bourgeois domestic life, and travels to Russia, France, and an alternate world inhabited by mermen. The novel ends with Simplicius turning to a life of hermitage, denouncing the world as corrupt. ABOUT THE ARTIST Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence. Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting. In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories. Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday. Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...

Lou Barlow (Louis Breslow), 'On the Beach' (Coney Island) wood engraving, c. 1937, edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. Stamped 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT NYC WPA' in the bottom left margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, with all the fine lines printing clearly, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 3 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Scarce. Image size 11 x 8 1/8 inches; sheet size 16 x 11 3/8 inches. Created during the Great Depression for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York City. Impressions of this work are in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum, and the New York Public Library. ABOUT THE IMAGE Due to Coney Island's proximity to Manhattan, Brooklyn, and other New York boroughs, it began attracting vacationers in the 1830s and 1840s. Most of the vacationers were wealthy and went by carriage roads and steamship services that reduced travel time from a formerly half-day journey to two hours. By the late 1870s, the development of Coney Island's amusement park attractions and hotels drew people from all social classes. When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company electrified the steam railroads and connected Brooklyn to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island turned rapidly from a resort to an accessible location for day-trippers seeking to escape the summer heat in New York City's tenements. In 1915, the Sea Beach Line was upgraded to a subway line, and the opening of the Stillwell Avenue station in 1919 ushered in Coney Island's busiest era. On the peak summer days, over a million people would travel to Coney Island. In 1937, New York City purchased a 400-foot-wide strip of land along the shoreline to allow the boardwalk to be moved 300 feet inland. At this point, Coney Island was so crowded on summer weekends that parks commissioner Robert Moses...

Will barnet, 'Child Reaching', woodcut, 1940, edition 25, Cole 82. Signed and titled in pencil. A fine, black impression, on fibrous Japan paper, with full margins (5/8 to 1 3/4 inch...

An American painter, printmaker, and illustrator. His work was featured in "The Masses" and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. This wood en...

Albert Abramovitz was an amazingly skilled wood engraver. This California Mission scene is unusual in his work, but carries the subject so well. It is signed and titled in pencil.

This is among the very few prints known by Spanner. It's the epitome of joie de vivre. It is signed, numbered, and annotated 'Hand print,' in pencil. The numbering indicates an edit...

Elizabeth Catlett “Man” 1975 (The Print Club of Cleveland Publication Number 83, 2005) Woodcut and Color Linocut Printed in 2003 at JK Fine Art Editions Co., Union City, New Jersey Signed and Dated By The Artist Lower Right Titled Lower Left Ed. of 250 Image Size: approx 18 x 12 inches Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) is regarded as one of the most important women artists and African American artists of our time. She believed art could affect social change and that she should be an agent for that change: “I have always wanted my art to service black people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” As an artist and an activist, Catlett highlighted the dignity and courage of motherhood, poverty, and the working class, returning again and again to the subject she understood best—African American women. The work below, entitled, “Man”, is "carved from a block of wood, chiseled like a relief. Catlett, a sculptor as well as a printmaker, carves figures out of wood, and so is extremely familiar with this material. For ‘Man’ she exploits the grain of the wood, allowing to to describe the texture of the skin and form vertical striations, almost scarring the image. Below this intense, three-dimensional visage parades seven boys, printed repetitively from a single linoleum block in a “rainbow roll” that changes from gold to brown. This row of brightly colored figures with bare feet, flat like a string of paper dolls, raise their arms toward the powerful depiction of the troubled man above.” Biography: Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Known for abstract sculpture in bronze and marble as well as prints and paintings, particularly depicting the female figure, Elizabeth Catlett is unique for distilling African American, Native American, and Mexican art in her work. She is "considered by many to be the greatest American black sculptor". . .(Rubinstein 320) Catlett was born in Washington D.C. and later became a Mexican citizen, residing in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico. She spent the last 35 years of her life in Mexico. Her father, a math teacher at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, died before she was born, but the family, including her working mother, lived in the relatively commodious home of his family in DC. Catlett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, where there was much discussion about whether or not black artists should depict their own heritage or embrace European modernism. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940 from the University of Iowa, where she had gone to study with Grant Wood, Regionalist* painter. His teaching dictum was "paint what you know best," and this advice set her on the path of dealing with her own background. She credits Wood with excellent teaching and deep concern for his students, but she had a problem during that time of taking classes from him because black students were not allowed housing in the University's dormitories. Following graduation in 1940, she became Chair of the Art Department at Dillard University in New Orleans. There she successfully lobbied for life classes with nude models, and gained museum admission to black students at a local museum that to that point, had banned their entrance. That same year, her painting Mother and Child, depicting African-American figures won her much recognition. From 1944 to 1946, she taught at the George Washington Carver School, an alternative community school in Harlem that provided instruction for working men and women of the city. From her experiences with these people, she did a series of paintings, prints, and sculptures with the theme "I Am a Negro Woman." In 1946, she received a Rosenwald Fellowship*, and she and her artist husband, Charles White, traveled to Mexico where she became interested in the Mexican working classes. In 1947, she settled permanently in Mexico where she, divorced from White, married artist Francisco Mora...