Girl

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Girl

Artist Gwen Knight American, 1913 - 2005

Place of OriginAmerica

Date2004

Dimensions17 × 15 7/8 in. (43.2 × 40.3 cm)

MediumSilkscreen on paper

ClassificationPrints

Credit LineWilliam J. Hitchcock Fund in memory of Grace J. Hitchcock

Object number

2021.32

Not on View

Label TextGwen 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.