Helen Lundeberg and WPA/Federal Art Project, Los Angeles
Planets
1937
Scroll
Physical Qualities
Crayon lithograph, Sheet: 400 x 311 mm. (15 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.)
Image: 303 x 227 mm. (11 15/16 x 8 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
The United States General Services Administration, formerly Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Object Number
L.1943.9.476
WPA workshops brought together artists at varying stages of their careers, allowing young artists to make connections with established peers. Concentric rings of undulating lines form a tunnel in Olinka Hrdy’s Turner Falls II. Perhaps Dorothy Jeakins, whose desk adjoined Hrdy’s in the WPA Los Angeles Graphic Arts Workshop, chose to echo Hrdy’s sinuous composition with the pronounced profile and sweeping tresses of her portrait of Teru Osato (c. 1920–1946), a Japanese American art student. Both Hrdy and Jeakins worked in the studio at the same time as Helen Lundeberg, known for teaching the post-surrealist style. Her print Planets features mysterious juxtapositions of starkly rendered geometric forms.
Extended Loans IN
Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA
Baltimore Museum of Art. WPA Prints from the 1930’s. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1981, cat. no. 23, cover.
Inscribed: RECTO: LL margin (pencil): 'Lundeberg'; BR (pencil): '15x20 white'. VERSO: BL (stamped in black ink): 'JUL 29 1938'; C: BMA stamp.
