|
David Acton, curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, discusses the art of color woodcut and its innovators in a lavishly illustrated survey of the time period from the 1890s through the 1930s.
From the end of the 19th century through the years just prior to World War II, the craft of color woodcut flourished in the United States.
Inspired by European traditions artisans explored the medium as a way to multiply their designs. In New England and Northern California, others explored Asian printmaking combining their techniques and styles with European art.
Vivid in hue and aesthetic in style, these works were popular as decorative accents in arts and crafts-style architecture.
The simplicity of the woodcuts encouraged innovation and skillful artists to develop their own individualized modes of working.
Acton will address several issues including the technical rudiments of European and Japanese color woodcut, early female printmakers and the Western dissemination of color woodcut.
He will also discuss the Provincetown Print. The Provincetown Print or White-Line Woodcut, as it is also known, is a uniquely American art form developed in the early 1900's in Provincetown, Mass., when the popularity of Japanese woodblock prints, Cubism and Abstract Theory all contributed to the development of a new technique of color wood-block printing.
Acton’s publications include “A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960” and monograph studies of Arthur Wesley Dow, Blanche Lazzell and Gustave Baumann.
The lecture is followed by a reception at The Gamble House.
The Gamble House, a National Historic Landmark owned by the City of Pasadena and operated by USC, is open for public tours.
More Information:
Related Events
|
