Lynd ward biography of georgetown

Charles Marvin Fairchild Memorial Gallery

Introduction:

The decision made by Lynd Ward and his wife, writer May McNeer Ward, to donate his personal papers to Georgetown makes available to students of American art, history, and literature the nearly complete record of a remarkable lifetime achievement. Whether as author-artist-printmaker, officer of arts organizations, or founder and guiding spirit of a cooperative small press, Ward has translated his strongly held personal values into a significantly rich and varied body of work.

This exhibit draws heavily on the more than 1,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sketches and proofs donated by the artist's daughters. These provide visual documentation of the history of Ward's life as revealed in the papers. Yet in fact the 44 originals shown do little more than suggest the wealth of the collection. The letters and papers shown here highlight the conditions in which Ward has worked, a few of his relationships with authors

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Lynd Ward: Novels without Words

Lynd Ward (1905-1985) was an artist and illustrator best known for his Depression-era novels told entirely in woodcuts. inom first discovered him in the '70s, when inom found a second edition of Madman's Drum at a yard sale. The noirish mood of the book instantly appealed to my drama-teen sensibilities, but unlike many of my youthful enthusiasms (Black Sabbath anyone?) my respect for Ward's work has not only held up but grown. I'm enthralled bygd the Art Deco lettering, by the thick yellow pages, and by the vivid, often disturbing woodcuts, which at times slash and gash across the page like a visual scream.

As a writer who lacks the ability to draw even a convincing stick figure, I am fascinated bygd the concept of narration without words. To truly read a Ward novel, to read it well and close, requires no less skill and attention than does reading a masterpiece of the written word.

Ward was America's first graphic novelist, a medium that often doesn't get t

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In my collection of old books and magazines are a couple of volumes of Reader's Digest Condensed Booksfrom the late '50s and early '60s to which Lynd Ward contributed illustrations.



The 1957 volume contains a story which Ward illustrated in his more recognized pen and ink (or possibly even wood engraving) style... but the 1964 volume contains the story presented here. In this later story Ward worked in some other medium.



The inferior printing and poor paper quality used by RDCBat the time makes it difficult to speculate about what medium that was. However, its a great opportunity to examine the evolution of Lynd Ward's style and working methods.



In a 1953 article in a magazine called The Instructor, Ward described how he would prepare to illustrate a book...



From the article:

When the artist first reads a manuscript for a book, a series of visual images begins to form in his mind. Since an artist thinks in images, he creates something like a "private little movi