They lived in a house built by her father in New Ulm, Minnesota, which has now been restored.
Wanda went on to study and work in New York, and in the mid-1920s her career took off. Now she's known for her children's books, starting with Millions of Cats in 1928.
Her non-children's book work often has a slightly spooky tinge, for instance "Lime Light" -
See more of her prints here.The family had spoken German at home, and in addition to having the visual-art input from her father, Wanda heard folktales from her storyteller mother. In 1936 the first of her translations from the brothers Grimm was published; the best known is probably Snow White, published in 1938. (Grimm's fairy tales are an important part of my own background, read to us kids in German by my grandmother from her old book, printed in "black-letter" (fraktur) style.)
Wanda Gag's motto was "draw to live and live to draw", and she never let her family or her marriage get in the way of her career. A lifelong chain smoker, she died of lung cancer in 1946.
2 comments:
Nice article about a dedicated female artist. Usually the women artists seem to end up in an asylum, like Camille Claudel, or work under the aegis of a male artist. I've never heard of Wanda or seen her work before so thank you for introducing her to me. Her drawings are quite striking. I bet she had many stories to tell.
Merry Christmas.
Thanks, Margaret, for this introduction to a fascinating sounding woman artist, I too didn't know of her. I grew up with a big book of Finnish translations of Grimm's fairy tales which I still have, with torn cover and pages falling out! My husband had the German ones read to him, so there's a connection, eh!
Post a Comment