Color woodcut on Japan paper, 1920. 300x294 mm; 11¾x11½ inches, wide margins. Edition of approximately 11. Signed in pencil, lower left. Signed, titled, dated "Feb, 1921" and inscribed "96/9" in pencil, verso. Acton 18; Clarkson 32.
According to Lazzell's record book, this color woodcut was created in Provincetown in 1920 and she recorded only 11 proofs from the block.
Lazzell was an American Modernist printmaker and a member of the pioneering wood block print society (the first of its kind in America) known as the Provincetown Printers. This small group of printmakers came together in 1915 in the artistic community of Provincetown, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which had quickly become a destination for both avant-garde American artists and artists living in Europe who were fleeing the turmoil of World War I. The group remains most noteworthy for having innovated the white-line woodcut print, or the Provincetown Print.
Inspired by 19th century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts, these artists carved their designs onto a single block, rather than multiple blocks in the western printmaking tradition, and inked each section with a different color. The small grooves between each segment create the distinctive white lines of these woodcuts. Bror J. O. Nordfeldt, also a member of the Provincetown Printers, developed the technique, but Lazzell is considered the master of the white-line woodcut.
Renowned for her devotion to the technique and for the sophistication of her work, as well as the influence of abstraction and Cubism in her work, she gained popularity not only in America but also in Europe, where she first exhibited in 1923 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
