The Artistry of Women Printmakers

by Tula Connell, Mar 25, 2006

There are lots of events and actions taking place to commemorate Women’s History Month throughout March, and SisterGlenn Scott from Education Austin, AFT/NEA Local 2048, brings to our attention an exhibition of women printmakers in San Antonio.

Find out more about this exhibit at the McNay Art Museum website in San Antonio.

From Scott:

Labor related themes are beautifully captured in an art exhibit of women printmakers now showing at the McNay museum in San Antonio. Many of the women are little known or never before exhibited. Several artists worked as artists for the WPA [Works Progress Administration] during the Depression and also worked for international unions.

There is a linocut by Elizabeth Catlett (1952) titled “Sharecropper.” This is a powerful graphic that may be familiar to folks who were active in labor struggles in the 70s.

In her 1937 lithograph “Lockout,” Kyra Markham sends a powerful message of worker subjugation. Clare Leighton authored a wood engraving in 1930 called Hop Pickers, a snapshot of hard labor. She taught art classes through the WPA.

Long hours and back breaking work are depicted in Helen Farr Sloan’s lithography Laundry #1 (1932). The unrelenting heat from a brick mill is shown in bright burnt orange. Even the men’s skin seems to be on fire in a three-color lithograph by Margaret Lowengrund (1935).

A proud but stick-thin woman symbolizes the sacrifices made by families during strikes in “Strikers wife” (1935) a haunting aquatint by Dorothy Rutka.

“Strike News,” a scene of workers reading a union paper on a picket line depicts the energy of the moment. This lithograph was by Minna Citron, done in 1937.

One artist Sylvia Wald traveled to Japan, according to museum notes. Her screen print from 1940 is called simply “Fuel.” It is a scene of powerful metaphor as three Asian workers strain to the limits of their strength, trying to pull and push uphill a wagon without wheels loaded with lumber.
 

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