Lynd Ward
Lynd Kendall Ward ( * June 26, 1905, † 28 June 1985) was an American artist and author. Lynd Ward illustrated about 200 books for children and books for adults. He was a father of the graphic novel, the stories without words told only by his woodcut art. But Ward also used other techniques such as ink, water color and oil, produced lithographs and worked in the mezzotint technique.
Life
Ward grew up in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. His father was a Methodist preacher and well-known politician Harry F. Ward. Lynd Ward allegedly knew early on that he would be an artist when he realized that his name read backwards draw ( draw) was called. He studied art education at Columbia University in New York. There he met his future wife May McNeer know. They married after graduation (1926) and spent her first year of marriage in Europe, where Ward printing and book design by Hans Alexander Müller studied at the Art Academy in Leipzig. He saw a book of Belgian woodcarver and illustrator Frans Masereel and took over the idea of telling stories without words. Ward's first book, the purely graphic novel Gods ' Man was released in October 1929 in the week of the stock market collapse. The man or the man of the gods was a purely visual story that was fully realized by woodcuts. Altogether he made six such woodcut books, the last and most elaborate was Vertigo (1937 ).
Ward used various techniques to illustrate more than one hundred children's books, some of which originated with his wife May McNeer. Ward was later a frequent illustrator for the Heritage Book Club (from 1938), the editions of the classics produced (Heritage Limited Editions Club ). Ward made in his works from his socialist convictions no secret and acted according to those. He founded in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, the publishing cooperative Equinox Cooperative Press.
Ward was a member of the Society of Illustrators, the Society of American Graphic Arts, and the National Academy of Design. He received a number of awards, including the Library of Congress Award for woodcut that. Caldecott Medal and an award for outstanding achievement in the children's book division of Rutgers University ( Distinguished Contribution to Children 's Literature ) Six of his books received the Newbery Honor Medal, and two a simple Newbery Medal. Ward retired in 1979 returned to Reston, Virginia. He died on 28 June 1985.
Books without words
In his first book, Gods ' Man ( 1929), he blended Art Nouveau and Expressionism to tell from the labors of the artist with his art, the deceptive lure of money and fame, which he can only escape by reaching a new innocence. This book was both a tribute to Frans Masereel and Otto Nückel. It exerted a lasting influence, so as to Allen Ginsberg.
- Gods ' Man ( 1929)
- Madman's Drum ( 1930)
- Wild Pilgrimage (1932 )
- Prelude to a Million Years (1933 )
- Song Without Words ( 1936)
- Vertigo (1937 )
In his estate was still another, unfinished book and its 26 woodcuts (of 44 planned ) were published as Lynd Ward 's Last, Unfinished, Wordless Novel ( 2001).
He also has a children's book in shades of gray painted without words, The Silver Pony ( 1973). In this book there are African-American and Native American figures.
Further work
Ward's woodcuts illustrated Alec Waugh's travelogue Hot Countries and a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Illustrated by him children's book The Biggest Bear received 1953 Caldecott Medal ( The Biggest Bear ) Other well-known works Wards are his images for Esther Forbes ' Johnny Tremain and The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge ( text Hildegarde Swift) (1942 ).
Ward followed the communist propaganda and denounced racism. In wild Pilgrimage, he represented the lynching and its political sympathy for African Americans is clearly in the works for North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of the American Negro, by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift (1947).
Aftermath
The work of Lynd Ward, the American cartoonist and theorist Art Spiegelman wrote " a few thousand words about six books contain not a single ". This essay was translated by Andreas Platthaus and printed in the newspaper.
Werkausgaben
1972 all six woodcut books were published under the title Storyteller Without Words at Abrams. Ward broke his usual silence and provided the books with brief introductions.
- Lynd Ward Six Novels in Woodcuts, Library of America ISBN 978-1598530827