BOCHOŘÁKOVÁ-DITTRICHOVÁ, Helena.

£5,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Enfance: Gravures sur Bois (Childhood: A Cycle of Woodcuts). First French edition, limited issue, number 8 of 10 copies printed on vellum and signed by the artist, from a total print run of 310. Childhood is a memoir of the joys and sorrows of Bochořáková-Dittrichová's early years, told through a series of 95 woodcuts. It was originally published the previous year in Czech by the Prague publisher Orbis.The Czech artist and writer Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová (1894-1980) brought her own distinct style to the woodcut novel, a genre developed by Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward in the early 20th century. In Childhood, she mostly depicted quiet domestic scenes from her middle-class upbringing. Her work "offers a refreshing divergence from the squalor presented by urban woodcut novel artists... Bochořáková's focus is not on the sullen side of life but rather an examination of childhood with playful games such as building snowmen and snowball fights. This is a youthful work in the narrative sense, and it is best to consider this a novel of impressions" (Beronä, p. 10). Inspired by her own experiences as much as by world history and religion, Bochořáková-Dittrichová "quietly strengthened the case for topics such as domestic life to be seen as legitimate art subjects rather than as easily dismissed female fodder" (Rebecca Gross, quoted by Brooks).

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