YOUNG AND OLD

Hnizdovsky, Jacques. YOUNG AND OLD. Tahir 3. Woodcut, 1944. Edition of 100, Titled, signed and numbered 49/100, all in pencil. 5 1/2 x 4 inches. In excellent condition. One of the artist's earliest woodcuts, done in a style heavily influenced by the work of Durer. In his introduction to Tahir's catalogue of his woodcuts Hnizdovsky discusses his debt to Durer, his desire to do a portfolio of woodcuts of trees, his experimentation with the medium, carried through his first seven woodcuts, his discouragement with his progress, his abandonment of the medium, his difficulties in postwar Europe, his emigration to the U.S. in 1949, his struggles to become an independent artist and the reawakening of his interest in the woodcut in 1950. The early woodcuts, done while the artist still lived in the Ukraine, are rare.