Jitterbugs (II)
serigraph on paper, ca. 1941
Sitting Model
hand-colored relief print, ca. 1939
Harlem Street with Church
hand-colored relief print, ca. 1939-1940
Three Friends
serigraph on paper, ca. 1944-1945
Willie and Holcha
hand-colored woodcut on paper, ca. 1935
Female Nude
linoleum cut on paper, ca. 1930-1935
Chalets by Jostedal Glacier
hand-colored woodcut on paper, ca. 1935-1938
Lom Kirke, Norway
hand-colored woodcut on paper, ca. 1935-1938
Self-Portrait
woodcut on paper, ca. 1933
Farm Couple at Well
hand-colored relief print, ca. 1940-1941
William Henry Johnson (1901–1970) was born in Florence, South Carolina, and educated at art schools in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. He spent the early years of his career in Europe, where he was attracted to the expressive manifestations of European modernism.
Johnson’s bold, rough woodcuts from the 1930s, inspired by German expressionist woodcutting techniques, distinguish his prints from the work of most other American artists, who used more traditional methods of printmaking. The materials he used for making relief prints were readily available: scrap lumber or a piece of linoleum. After he returned to the United States in 1939, Johnson continued to produce relief prints. He also began to experiment with serigraphy. While many American artists of his generation created multiple impressions of a single image, Johnson often varied the image from one impression to the next. His prints, like his paintings, reveal the development of a distinctive artistic language to express powerful narrative, emotional, and symbolic content.
I was immediately captured by the Smithsonian flickr set of Mr. Johnson’s exciting and expressive works on paper. You will definitely want to check out the museum’s collection in its entirety and also visit the William H. Johnson flickr group where other institutions are contributing prints from their WHJ collections.
>> William H. Johnson Smithsonian flickr set + flickr group
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Editor’s note:
This post was originally published in March of 2010. As AQ-V has been fortunate to receive a huge leap in visitors this past year, I have decided to pull favorite bits here and there from the archives to present to hopefully new eyes.
Thank you always for your readership!
–Amy
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