Studio: international art (87.1924)

TWO AUSTRIAN ENGRAVERS *

THE wide and increasing interest mani-
fested by artists of this country in the
making of woodcuts and linocuts is shared
by many of their confreres on the Continent,
and hence it is interesting to compare the
work of such artists as Miss H. Ladstatter
and Dr. Emma Bormann with that of our
own practitioners in the same media.
In other countries and circles, which shall
be nameless, the predominating schools
seem to have stepped over the edge of a
precipice, and are now sunk in an abyss
of meaningless eccentricity, from which
only time and the new recognition of
age-long aesthetic truths can rescue them.
It is all the more refreshing to find that
in the performance of Miss Ladstatter
and Dr. Bormann a respect for tradition,

or rather the living and helpful side of
tradition, is combined with a sense of
present-day requirements and a wholly
original mode of expression. a 0
Miss Ladstatter’s Dorfstrasse shows a
sure command over her medium. It is
full of atmosphere, and, in its cool colour-
ing, gives a real and vivid impression of
winter among the mountain solitudes, 0
Dr. Bormann is already known to our
readers, from four wood engravings which
we reproduced in The Studio for May,
1922. Her work commands respect be-
cause of its sound quality, and because,
as the accompanying Minden Circus demon-
strates, she makes no attempt to cause
the woodcut to resemble other forms, but
offers it frankly for what it is. She is
well known as an exhibitor at Vienna,
Stockholm and Groningen. 0 0 0

u MINDEN CIRCUS.” WOODCUT
BY DR. EMMA BORMANN

(By courtesy of the European
Art Society)

137