Girl
Artist: Gwen Knight (American, 1913 - 2005)
Date: 2004
Dimensions:
17 × 15 7/8 in. (43.2 × 40.3 cm)
Medium: Silkscreen on paper
Place of Origin: America
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: William J. Hitchcock Fund in memory of Grace J. Hitchcock
Object number: 2021.32
Label Text:Gwen Knight, sometimes known as Gwendolyn, began printmaking later in her career after she received a commission in 1992 to create a lithograph. She later moved into silkscreening. Most of her prints are translations of her earlier paintings. Girl is based on her earliest surviving painting, Portrait of a Girl. Painted around 1940 and thought to be a self-portrait, it depicts a young woman’s head and shoulders as she seems to look out of a window or portal to a brilliant red flower within an environment composed of varying vibrant blues.
Knight once stated, “I am a figurative humanistic painter.” Composing portraits and scenes encapsulating the human spirit, she kept her focus on figures, even when the art world moved toward abstraction, expressionism, the political, or the conceptual. Intentionally personal, Knight’s works were inspired by her real-life surroundings. However, she would also infuse her figural images with some abstract elements that point to Modernist tenets, creating a visual vernacular entirely her own.
Knight once stated, “I am a figurative humanistic painter.” Composing portraits and scenes encapsulating the human spirit, she kept her focus on figures, even when the art world moved toward abstraction, expressionism, the political, or the conceptual. Intentionally personal, Knight’s works were inspired by her real-life surroundings. However, she would also infuse her figural images with some abstract elements that point to Modernist tenets, creating a visual vernacular entirely her own.
Not on view