The Cleveland Museum of Art (spacer)
Special Exhibitions 		(spacer) (separator) (spacer) (spacer)
Against the Grain 		(spacer)
(spacer)
  Against the Grain: Woodcuts from the Collection > History of the Woodcut > Woodcut in America
 
 
Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878-1956). <I>Pile Driver</I>, 1933; color woodcut. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund with the addition of a gift from Mrs. Edward B. Greene 1998.75
Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878-1956). Pile Driver, 1933; color woodcut. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund with the addition of a gift from Mrs. Edward B. Greene 1998.75

Woodcut in America

American artists, aware of the most avant-garde European styles, were also interested in color woodcuts. Blanche Lazzell studied in Paris between 1912 and 1914 but returned to the United Sates with the outbreak of World War I. In 1915, she joined other artists who had settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts, already an art colony.

Many of these friends made color woodcuts, and one of them, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, revolutionized the process. Instead of laboriously cutting a block for each color, he only used one block by cutting a groove in the wood to separate the colors. Since the surface-not the grooves-of the block is inked, the white of the paper acts as an outline around the colored shapes.

Lazzell's Pile Driver exemplifies how the white line accentuates the underlying linear structure of the image, which strengthens the conception and unifies the composition.

Page 6 of 8 | On the next page: Wood Engraving and Linocut