Block Printmakers Zorach

        To end the A-Z Challenge with a bang, I have for you today a Two-for-the-Price-of-One deal.  William and Marguerite Zorach were an art power couple who were among the first artists to introduce cubism, fauvism, and European modernist styles into American modernism.  William (Lithuania/USA, 1887-1966) was actually given Zorach as his first name at birth, but it was changed when he went to school in the USA.  He and Marguerite (USA, 1887-1968) adopted Zorach as their family name when they married in 1912.

        Neither was primarily a printmaker, although William Z did somewhat more, but I have selected a couple of pieces from each of them.  You can see that they share a style.  Compare these first two pieces, one by each of them, yet with the same white on black, the same breaking up of the nude bodies into defined areas of musculature, the same tipped narrow oval heads, and even the same circle-within-a-diamond shape in the upper center.  My husband D is not an artist, and I’m fascinated by the idea of what it would be like sharing art so intimately with a life partner.  However, this level of similarity may be sharing a little too much for me!  I think I like a little more personal variation.

        Here’s one by William Z.  I like the way mother and child are embracing, and I like the fish in the stylized water, but what I like best is the view of Provincetown, Massachusetts in the background, with its waterfront houses, mounding trees, and Pilgrim Monument tower on the high ground.  (The tower, which was completed in 1910, was only six years old when William Z printed this image.)  There’s something rather funny going on with the sail, which appears to be transparent except at the very top, but I don’t mind; I think it succeeds in suggesting a sailboat just fine, and I like being able to see the buildings.

        And here’s one by Marguerite Z.  It’s much later than the others, and was made as a Christmas card, so I’m guessing Marguerite Z viewed it as more casual than the “real Art.”  This impression is also imperfectly printed, as you can see on the ziz-zaggy triangle in the middle.  However, I find the leaping deer rather pleasing - what can I say, I do tend to like prints of animals better than people!

        Here’s my only other Z printmaker:

Zappala, Matthew

        And thus concludes the 2017 A-Z Challenge!

[Pictures: Provincetown Players, linoleum block print by Marguerite Zorach, c 1915;

Swimmer, metal relief cut by William Zorach, c 1915 (Images from Smithsonian American Art Museum);

Sailing Provincetown, linocut by William Zorach, 1916 (Image from the Cleveland Museum of Art);

Christmas Card, linoleum block print by Marguerite Zorach, 1963 (Image from Phillips Museum of Art).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter Z

Block Printmaker Yamanaka

        When I decided to feature Gen Yamanaka (Japan, b 1954) today, and was searching around for more images of his work, I recognized one.  Turns out I actually have posted a piece from him before, but only as a thumbnail.  So today I have that piece again, big enough to appreciate better, and a couple of others, each of which has a slightly different sort of style (though they all have the same horizon).

        Yamanaka belongs, according to one biography, “to a leading group of contemporary Japanese woodblock artists who are guided by pure abstractions and symbolic representations of contemporary life.”  This first piece definitely looks symbolic of something - perhaps the isolation of modern life or something.  But I’m not so sure about the others!  So let’s forget meaning and look at technique.

        There’s a slightly different ink effect on each of these pieces.  On the first, you can see the marks of the ink being painted onto the block, leaving brush strokes.  The use of opaque white ink in places adds to a feeling of paintiness.  In the second piece, by contrast, the wood grain in the “sky” is quite clear, and there is some bleeding of color around the “figures,” which imply a very thin, watery ink.  On the other hand, perhaps the effect was artificially achieved by double printing a slightly smaller area over a slightly larger one in order to leave a thin border; I can’t quite tell.  As for the third piece, it looks almost more like a paper collage with its totally flat, geometric shapes.  Adding to the effect is the use of opaque white ink instead of allowing uninked paper to be the image’s white.

        Once again, this artist is almost exactly contemporary with the previous two (W and X), but working in a completely different milieu, and with a completely different style.

        

        Looks like if you don’t count Yamanaka himself, I have previously featured one Y printmaker:
Young, Sarah

[Pictures: The Night Piece I, color woodblock by Gen Yamanaka, 1985 (Image from the Verne Collection);

White Night, color woodcut by Yamanaka, 1990 (Image from the Cleveland Museum of Art);

Seven Houses, color woodcut by Yamanaka, 2014 (Image from the Verne Collection).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter Y

Block Printmaker Xu

        Xu Bing (China, b 1955) is an eclectic artist famous for large-scale installations in a variety of media, but he has a background in printmaking and often returns to it.  This first piece is an early one, wholly representational although stylized.  It almost suggests a schematic, with its electric wires across the top and water shore across the bottom, and the buildings arranged in a higgelty-piggelty grid filling the space between.  I like the rhythm of it.

        The second two pieces are both parts of Five Series of Repetitions, in which (as far as I can make out from various descriptions) 20 blocks were printed on a double-sided scroll.  Many of Xu’s works are large, multi-part installation pieces with grand philosophical meaning, although I couldn’t tell you what the meaning is.  But I like the tadpoles, especially in this season of vernal pools in my neck of the woods.  In the third piece, the rows of small plants resemble Chinese characters, a recurring theme that Xu has explored in many ways throughout his career.  In both of these pieces you can see that Xu was making a shift from representation toward more abstract and conceptual art.

        Xu has been something of a darling of the art world, even receiving a MacArthur “genius grant,” but I find that I like some of his work very much, while some I very much dislike.  These relatively small, straightforward wood block prints aren’t the sort of thing that makes him famous, but I judge an artist by his block prints!

        And here’s my sole previously featured X printmaker:

Xiang Silou (and here)

[Pictures: Shang Cheng (Mountain City), woodcut by Xu Bing, 1982 (Image from Booklyn);

Life Pond, woodcut by Xu, 1987;

Moving Clouds, woodcut by Xu, 1987 (Images from Ashmolean).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter X

Block Printmaker Whitman

        Karen Whitman (USA, 1953 -) was born in New York City and that city is her chief inspiration.  Her scenes, therefore, tend to be very crowded and busy with a great use of interesting and varied patterns to differentiate between different areas.  I am especially drawn to her night scenes without people, which give that bittersweet feeling of being alone in a crowd.  The stark blacks and bright whites of night scenes are a great match with block prints, as are the strong shapes and contrasting textures of architecture.

        This first piece is very characteristic of Whitman’s work, with its rooftop water tower against a backdrop of city skyline and night sky.  Like many of her pieces, although there are no visible people, there are implied people.  Someone’s cat rests on the armchair they’ve put out on the roof, while an airplane crosses the sky, its own separate world.

        Next a more vertiginous view downwards into the space between buildings.  I love how the  tree and the water tower’s shadow are depicted without outlines, and purely by absence - a tree grows in the spaces between carved lines.  I always envy that look, but can’t quite seem to trust my carving enough to get there myself.

        The one light sky in this bunch is particularly interesting and impressionistic, perhaps even expressionistic.  Spots are an unusual choice for sky, but they work for van Gogh, and they work here.  The somewhat oppressive feeling is increased by the angle of the buildings and signposts.  Notice that all the signs and lights are shutting off the viewer.  On the other hand, I like the pigeons watching over the scene like benign spirits.

        Finally, another rooftop view with jumbled angles and even rather Seussian curves to the architecture.  There’s another cat, and for extra credit spot the water tower - there’s one in each of today’s pieces.  I confess I really like water towers, too!

        And here is my collection of W printmakers from prior posts:

Wadsworth, Edward

Walker, George A.

Walleshausen Von Cselény, Zsigmond

Ward, Lynd

Whipple, Barbara

White, Ethelbert

Winters, Terry

Wormell, Christopher (no single post on Wormell, but his prints are sprinkled throughout this blog.  To find them all, search on his name in the “Search This Blog” feature in the sidebar.)

[Pictures: Moonlit Tower, linoleum cut by Karen Whitman, 2009;

Airshaft, linoleum cut by Whitman, 2003;

One Way, linoleum cut by Whitman, 2007;

Towers, linoleum cut by Whitman, 2000
(All images from The Old Print Shop).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter W

Block Printmaker Van der Vossen

        André van der Vossen (Netherlands, 1893-1963) was more-or-less a contemporary of the previous two artists, which shows what a wide variety of relief block printmaking was going on in the first half of the twentieth century.  And Van der Vossen provides plenty of variety all on his own.  I’ve picked today’s pieces to highlight some of that variety, and in addition to these he also designed Dutch paper currency with yet another sort of look.

        The first is my favorite, a nice clutter of black and white shapes, all about areas rather than lines.  There’s a drawbridge, cheek by jowl with a laundry line, hanging right smack against the houses, which are jammed tight against the ships in the background.  And a fun detail: you can see that the little person near the ships is wearing wooden shoes.

        There’s a lot more detail in this image of men in a boarding house, and there’s somewhat more shading, although you still get the same impression of crowdedness.  The men’s faces are a little stiff, but they have nice individual character behind their mustaches!

        An altogether different look is this bold design from a poster advertising an art exhibit.  I can’t say I like it so much, but it represents Van der Vossen’s interest in “modern” art.  I like the hand clutching art supplies, and the staring eye is certainly intense, even if I do have to wonder about the vertical pupil!  But after all, why worry about that when realism obviously wasn’t his priority here.

        And finally a fun scene of the animals gathered by Adam.  This was published as the illustration to a poem and it definitely has a look as if for children with its cute, chunky creatures and its touches of color.  Personally, I’d like it better without those colored accent blocks, but it’s still an enjoyable piece.  I especially like the cow’s face turned toward us, the pig, and the ape.  The giraffe is looking adorably askance about something behind it, perhaps Adam and Eve disappearing pinkly toward the side of the picture.  But can anyone identify the thing in the upper right corner that looks like a sea cucumber with rabbit ears up in a tree?

        Here is the slim digest of V printmakers previously featured in this blog:

Vallotton, Félix

Vik, Karel

Voyiya, Vuyile

[Pictures: Volendam, wood block print by André van der Vossen (Image from Kunstveiling);

Bij Tante Leen in ‘Het Witte Pard’, woodcut by Van der Vossen, 1929 (Image from Haffmans Kunst en Antiekhandel);

Tentoonstelling, lithograph reproduction of woodcut design by Van der Vossen, c 1920 (Image from Colletti Gallery);

Adam and the Animals, colored woodcut by Van der Vossen, (Image from University of Pretoria).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter V

Block Printmaker Urushibara

        Yoshijiro Urushibara (Japan, 1889-1953) travelled to London in 1910 to demonstrate Japanese woodcut printing at an Anglo-Japanese Exhibition.  He stuck around thereafter and spent most of his working life in England and France collaborating with several European artists until returning to Japan in 1940.  He made a number of Japanese-style prints based on designs by European artists, but the ones I’ve chosen for today are, as far as the [possibly incomplete] record indicates, his own designs as well as execution.

        Although Urushibara always made color prints, I’ve chosen one in which the colors are exclusively different greys, thus giving more of a black and white sensibility.  The block of buildings on the right looks a bit like cut out stage scenery, but I really like the bridge and foreground.

        I absolutely love this owl, so deceptively simple.  The owl is silhouetted without any detail, but the complex branches of the tree require multiple blocks for their different shades of grey.  I love the coloring of the sky, and also how the wood grain shows, contributing to the halo around the moon, but also reminding us that this is made with wood.

        Alas, I don’t appear to have any previous U printmakers to share.

[Pictures: Ponte Santa Paternina, Venice, color wood block print by Yoshijiro Urushibara;

Night Owl, color wood block print by Urushibara (Images from Urushibara woodblock web site).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter U

Block Printmaker Taylor

        Charles William Taylor (UK, 1878-1960) was a watercolorist as well as a wood engraver, and in both media he was extremely competent and fairly conventional.  I might not have chosen him for my T printmaker, except that you can clearly see, if you note the other T printmakers below, that “Taylor” is obviously the single most important name in all of relief printmaking, and not to feature a Taylor would be a terrible omission.  As far as I know, none of these Taylors is related to any other, so it’s evidently the name itself that’s significant.

        To say that this particular Taylor was competent and conventional, though, is not intended as damning with faint praise.  I think his landscapes have a really nice sense of depth which draws the viewer in and makes the scenes feel quite spacious.  The empty white skies perhaps contribute to this feel, and large white areas are very unusual in wood engraving because the usual tools make very small lines rather than wide gouges.  But moreover there’s also a particular intensity in the foreground details.  These are not especially large blocks - the third, for example, is 8.5 by 6.25 inches - so to make them capture great depth and space is really quite an impressive feat.

        Here are the links to the Taylors and other previously-featured T printmakers:

Taylor, Anna Heyward

Taylor, Edgar Dorsey

Taylor, Maxwell

Thalmann, Max

Trueblood, Emily

Turzak, Charles (and here)

[Pictures: Lamberhurst, woodcut or wood engraving by Charles William Taylor, before 1930 (Image from Thomas Shahan flickr);

Chanctonbury Ring, wood engraving by Taylor (Image from Modern Printmakers)

Somewhere in Wales, woodcut by Taylor, mid 1920s (Image from V&A).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter T

If you’re in the greater Boston area, come see my block prints and many other artists at Needham Open Studios tomorrow and/or Sunday!

Block Printmaker Schäufelein

        Hans Leonhard Schäufelein (Germany, c 1480-1540) studied under Michael Wohlgemut of Nuremberg Chronicle fame, and was an assistant and imitator of Albrecht Dürer.  He did many of the usual images of the Life of Christ so popular at the time, but I’ve included his Ascension here because it strikes me as unusual and unusually fun.  Jesus is floating right up out of the frame of the picture as he ascends so that only his feet are still showing, which really tickles me.  You can see his footprints still on the rock from before take-off.  I don’t know whether Schäufelein came up with this composition himself, or whether it was a common way of depicting the Ascension, but I can’t recall having seen one like it before.

        Today’s second piece is one in my own collection, my parents having bought it back in the early days of their marriage, identified as by Schäufelein but without further information.  My father found it listed in a print collection with the title “Outdoor Feast with a Prince and His Wife,” undated.  When I first tried to research it I found a reproduction titled “Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Height of his Power,” still

undated.  Neither of these was very satisfactory.  So I’m quite pleased that I’ve finally tracked it down and discovered that it is the last panel in an epic 4-panel illustration of Judith and Holofernes.  Judith was a favorite subject of renaissance artists, what with sex, violence, and religion all in one hit.  To summarize, Judith’s city is under siege, so she seduces the enemy general and then chops off his head, thus saving her people.  The beheading scene is the third panel in this spread, so our scene of the couple in the tent might be part of the seduction, or if the picture is to be read chronologically, then it must be the celebrating afterwards.  I still don’t know whether this four-block scene was simply made to be a free-standing image, or whether it was part of some larger project, although it looks like Schäufelein did make several other 4-panel Biblical scenes around the same time.

        One interesting historical note about the state of wood block printmaking in Schäufelein’s day: he was one of at least six artists who contributed designs for the illustrations of a 1517 chivalric novel in verse by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.  The artists were paid 2 gulden for each 3 designs they contributed, and the formschneider, or carver of the wood blocks, was paid 4 gulden per block.  This obviously reflects a belief at the time that the cutting was harder and/or more skilled work.  Certainly it would have been more time-consuming and physically difficult, but nowadays we tend to value the idea of the creativity put into the design more than the technical skill put into the execution, which is why today’s prints are attributed to Schäufelein and not to the anonymous formschneider.

        Here are plenty of other S printmakers for you to revisit:

Sandzen, Birger

Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl

Schön, Erhard

Serlio, Sebastiano

Siegl, Helen (and here)

Siqueiros, David Alfaro

Slater, Eric

Song Yuanwen

Spencer, Jim Edd

Spitzer, James

Stör, Lorenz (and here)

[Pictures: The Ascension of Christ, woodcut by Hans Schäufelein, 1507 (Image from The British Museum);

The Siege of Bethulia - Judith and Holofernes, set of 4 woodcuts by Schäufelein, c 1530 (Image of complete set from Albertina).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter S

If you’re in the greater Boston area, come see my block prints, plus many other artists, at Needham Open Studios this coming weekend!

Block Printmaker Roddie

        Helen Roddie is a printmaker working in England.  Her prints are complex patterns composed of simplifications of natural forms.  Often she plays around with taking a single plant and repeating it in glorious profusion until it creates a pattern with lots of graphic punch, as in the second two examples here.  She says, “I try to capture both the intricacy and simplicity of organic forms.”  I really like the way she emphasizes the distinctive features of each plant, yet makes them look really bold instead of fiddly.  But I also like the first piece here, where she weaves together multiple species from an ecosystem.  Just as I try to do with my art, Roddie glorifies small, often unnoticed beauties.

        Although she does do some prints with color, she also says, “I enjoy the challenge of translating pen line to print without the use and distraction of colour or subtle shades,” which is exactly one of the things I also really enjoy about relief printmaking.  So while our styles end up looking very different, I feel that Roddie and I have a lot in common in our approach and attitudes toward printmaking.  It’s really cool to see how someone with such a kindred sense of art creates pieces so wonderfully different from my own.

        

        Here, as promised, are lots of previously-featured R printmakers:

Rabel, Fanny

Raskin, Ellen

Raverat, Gwen (and here)

Ravilious, Eric

Rizzie, Dan

Robinson, Alan James

Royds, Mabel

Rudolph, Miriam

[Pictures: Passing Meadows, linocut by Helen Roddie;

Ladders to Heaven, linocut by Roddie;

Ribwort Weave, linocut by Roddie (All images from HelenRoddie.com).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter R

(The A-Z Challenge is now officially over, everyone else having reached Z on the last day of April, but I will continue to work my way through the remainder of the alphabet at my slower pace.)

If you’re in the greater Boston area, come see me and many other artists at Needham Open Studios this coming weekend!

Block Printmaker Quest

        Charles F. Quest (USA, 1904-1993) said that he found woodcuts “more enjoyable than any other means of expression.”  So he gets points for that!  Although he did some figures and some quite abstract pieces, Quest’s special subject is still lifes, which is, on the whole, not the most common subject for block printing.  Specifically, he experimented a lot with still lifes with mechanical elements, such as tools or machinery, and in a very “modern,” abstract style.  This first one is very typical of his work, with lots of different variations of small straight lines making different tones and textures in flat, geometric areas.  Plus I’m amused by the title, “Still Life with Vise.”  I like to imagine that someone told Quest, “You should do a traditional still life.  You know, with a vase arranged on a table…” but he misheard.

        I also give you, for a sampling of Quest’s work, a view of a furnace, which is a slightly larger scene clearly set in a basement, and a piece that’s more abstract, with more solid blacks and whites, and even some squiggly lines.  But the first two in particular I find really interesting, and attractive without being “pretty.”

        I have no previous Q printmakers.  But don’t worry; I’ll have plenty next time for R.  And this won’t be too short a post, because it’s also time for…

Words of the Month - Mind Your Q’s

        Q is a funny letter, being the only one in English with a constant companion.  The Romans borrowed it from the Etruscans, along with the usage of QV to represent the sound kw.  For the Romans, C, K, and Q could all be used to represent the sound k, but over time, for reasons I cannot tell you, C became dominant, and Q was left only when followed by the w sound.  English received the Q, and its attendant U, from the Norman French in 1066, and it began to supplant the earlier English spellings so that cwic became quick.  (Note that the Norman French were pronouncing their qu’s as kw.  It was later that French pronunciation shifted, so that words that English borrowed later from Parisian French have qu’s pronounced like a simple k, as in pique and quiche.)

        Now, as any Scrabble player will be quick to tell you, there actually are some English words that have Q without U, but these are almost all borrowings, and often questionably English.  Those words that have been thoroughly adopted into English often have a more common non-Q spelling, such as faqir (fakir), burqa (burka), qabalah (kabbalah), qi (chi), and sheqel (shekel).  Others are really still foreign words, even when they appear in English, such as qaf (the 21st letter of the Arabic alphabet), qawwali (devotional music of the Sufis), qindar (Albanian currency), and qiviut (musk-ox wool).  The only u-less Q words of English origin are of recent invention, such as qwerty, for the letters of the standard typing keyboard.  Perhaps the most ridiculous word on the list of Q’s without U’s is qhythsontyd, an obsolete Scottish spelling of “Whitsuntide”, which I don’t believe really belongs in a list of modern English at all!

        Ridiculousness is the segue to my last point.  Even with Norman spellings of native English words and plenty of borrowings from other languages, Q remains the second least common letter in English (after z), and that tends to make Q words sound intrinsically goofy.  Yes, words like quick and quiet are perfectly normal, but consider quack, quaff, quark, quaver, queasy, quibble, quinquennial, and quirk.  Don’t they seem a little sillier and more fun than your average word?

[Pictures: Still Life with Vise, wood engraving by Charles F. Quest, 1948 or 50 (Image from the Cleveland Museum of Art);

Furnace, wood engraving by Quest, 1949 (Image from Georgetown University Library)

Jazz, woodcut by Quest, 1952 or 55 (Image from the Old Print Shop).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter Q

Block Printmaker Parker

        Agnes Miller Parker (UK, 1895-1980) was most known as an illustrator and did wood engravings in that style of very fine, precisely controlled stippling and cross-hatching.  On the whole, this style tends to be too smooth for my taste - I like a little more carviness - but it’s certainly interesting for variety.  She’s also important for being one of the artists who helped bring about a revival in the use of relief block printing for book illustration in the early twentieth century, after it had gone out of fashion with the invention of other methods of reproduction in the second half of the nineteenth century.

        My favorites of Parker’s work are definitely her animals.  They combine a detailed naturalism with the stylized sleekness of the modern art movements of the mid twentieth century.  The backgrounds are often just a suggestion of forest or meadow while the animals themselves are detailed to the last whisker.  Parker obviously loved portraying the lithe movement and flexibility of animals, especially cats, a subject she returned to over and over.

        One interesting note is a curator’s observation that Parker “often conceived her wood-engraving designs in colour, which helped her bring a remarkable tonal richness to the final product.”  This is the opposite of what I usually think, which is that the best relief block prints are planned to take advantage of the strengths of black and white,

rather than adapting from the strengths of color.  But maybe this is why I don’t tend to be as attracted to the wood engravings with gradations of tone too fine and smooth.  At any rate, however, Parker’s animals are pretty cool.  I hope you enjoy them.

        Here are the P printmakers you can revisit in prior posts:

Patterson, Margaret Jordan

Phipps, Howard

Picasso, Pablo (and here, and here)

Pierneef, Jacobus

Potter, Albert

Power, Cyril

Pullinger, Herbert

[Pictures: The Challenge, wood engraving by Agnes Miller Parker, 1934 (Image from The Great Cat);

Two Rabbits, wood engraving by Parker, 1936 (Image from Vincent G Barlow);

Fox, wood engraving by Parker, 1940 (Image from invaluable);

Cocquette, wood engraving by Parker, 1934 (Image from The Great Cat).]

(Quotation from Anna McGee at Cambridge University Library.)

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter P

Block Printmaker Osimo

        Bruno da Osimo (Italy, 1888-1962) was active in wood block printmaking during the same period as Emil Nolde, of the previous post, and like Nolde he took as his last name the town of his birth.  Their styles, however, couldn’t be more different.  Osimo’s work is very controlled, and although he did a lot of stylized work depicting themes of Greek mythology, among others, most of his architectural scenes are very detailed and realistic.  However, one unusual element that he frequently includes is writing.  Carving lettering is not easy.  It’s very fiddly and time- consuming, and if you mess up a little it’s really noticeable.  (This is particularly on my mind right now as I’m designing a set of prints with a fair bit of writing, and I’m wondering how deeply I will end up regretting it!)

        The sheer amount of carving in the first piece is quite amazing.  First of all, there’s that writing, going all the way around the border.  Then there’s the little leaves filling half the block - and black leaves on white take a lot more carving than white leaves on black.  And finally the bricks.  Unfortunately I can’t make out sharp detail on these on-line photos, but it looks like white bricks and black mortar, which, again, is one of the hardest, most fiddly patterns to carve.

        The level of detail on the second piece is also pretty crazy, but perhaps the most interesting thing is Osimo’s choice to depict the building with the strong shadow falling right across it.  You’d think he might take a little artistic license and ignore the shadow in the interests of showing the building more clearly, particularly when it’s the sole focus of the piece rather than being part of a whole cityscape.  But whether he was working from a photograph or his own plein air sketches, he’s obviously chosen to depict this building with maximum realism.

        The third piece is my favorite.  The carving is beautiful, the composition is interesting, and the scene really captures my imagination.

        Somewhat to my surprise, I don’t seem to have any previously-featured artists that begin with the letter O.  That seems hard to believe, but there it is!

[Pictures: Convento di Santa Chiara, woodcut by Bruno da Osimo, 1925?;

Santa Maria della Piazza Ancona, woodcut by Osimo, 1925 (Images from ebay);

Agobbio, woodcut by Osimo, (Image from Gonnelli).]

A-Z Challenge, all posts for the letter O