Landscape

Edward Alexander Wadsworth

1914 · Woodcut · Drawings and Prints

Landscape is another woodcut of industrial terrain, yet instead of jutting verticals indicating chimneys and factories, the work has a more horizontal orientation and organic quality. Bold undulating lines of color and patterns recall the work of the Russian German artist Vasily Kandinsky, which Wadsworth knew well from his time in Munich. In the first issue of BLAST, Wadsworth translated an excerpt from Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art in which he praised the power of "a square, a circle, a triangle, a rhombus, a trapezium, and other innumerable forms. . . . All these forms are citizens of the abstract empire with equal rights." Wadsworth produced Landscape and other woodcuts in multiple color variants (different combinations of colored inks applied to the same carved woodblocks) and also used an array of papers to produce assorted visual effects.

Artist

Edward Alexander Wadsworth

Date

1914

Medium

Woodcut

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Leslie and Johanna Garfield Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace, Charles and Jessie Price, and David T Schiff Gifts, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, Dolores Valvidia Hurlburt Bequest, Peco Foundation and Friends of Drawings and Prints Gifts, and funds from various donors, 2019