Block Prints by Battiss

         Walter Whall Battiss (South Africa, 1906-1982) had an interest in various indigenous African art forms including rock art, San painting, and Ndebele beadwork.  You can see some of this influence in his relief block prints.  I am most intrigued by this first one, entitled Cattle Metamorphosed into Plants, because I wonder about the story behind it.  The cattle look somewhat similar in style to those in linocuts by Picasso, with whom Battiss was friends.  Picasso, too, combined bulls and plants in a fantastical way, which I featured in Picasso’s Garden.

        Next here are a couple of pieces with other animals: horses and moths.  They are not “realistic,” and they clearly demonstrate an interest in what artists today love to call “mark making.”  The moths in particular don’t look particularly planned.  Battiss includes his initals in many of his blocks, but always backwards.  This means he’s carving them so they look frontwards on the block, and thus print backwards on the paper.  That implies that Battiss either carves without planning, or draws any designs directly onto the block, rather than transferring from sketches on paper.  (There aren’t great ways to transfer onto either linoleum or wood, so my current method of doing all my work on paper first and then getting a nice, clean, clear reversed transfer is a benefit of using rubber.)

        Two pieces with boys show the influence of rock art, with the stylized naked bodies functioning almost as glyphs of people.  The first shows boys picking wild fruits from a thorny bush - one I would not want to go into without protective clothing!  The second shows a boy with pets: a nice, normal cat, but also some lizards and an unusual-looking bird.  I don’t know whether it’s intended to be a specific bird or species, or whether Battiss is just representing “bird” in a more hieroglyphic way.

        Finally, a woodcut with two layers, which could be either reduction or separate blocks.  Two people carrying things on their heads are behind four rocks, at least two of which seem to have rock art on them.  Although most of Battiss’s work is undated, these definitely seem to be in that 

early mid-century style, and you can definitely see Battiss’s connections with Picasso and others working under the influence of African styles.

[Pictures: Cattle Metamorphosed into Plants, linocut by Walter Whall Battiss;

Horses, woodcut by Battiss, 1943;

Moths, linocut by Battiss;

Boys Picking Wild Fruit, linocut by Battiss;

Boy with Pets, linocut by Battiss;

Four White Rocks, colour woodcut by Battiss (All images from MutualArt).]