Fritz Eichenberg

Good sacred art is the conscience of a culture.  During a forty year period, beginning in 1949, German-American Printmaker Fritz Eichenberg contributed over a 100 illustrations to The Catholic Worker, the newspaper Roman Catholic Social Activist Dorothy Day had founded in 1933 to address the burning issues of her time from a radical Christian perspective. Eichenberg's wood engravings and drawings perfectly embodied the texts, giving a contemporary twist to conventional religious imagery.  To mark the International Year of the Child, proclaimed by UNESCO in 1979, Eichenberg created this unsettling variation on traditional scenes of the Adoration of the Magi as a graphic reminder to readers of the plight of the Vietnamese boat people, who were fleeing their war-devastated homeland in the tens of thousands, creating a humanitarian crisis of international dimensions.  Set on the deck of a ship, the Madonna and Child in this Eichenberg wood engraving are a haggard Vietnamese mother with downcast eyes and an emaciated child. In place of the expected gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, these Wise Men offer the starving baby boy something to meet his immediate needs--a bowl of rice, a pitcher of milk, and an apple. Almost four decades later, the compassionate message of Eichenberg's Epiphany scene remains as timely as ever for an international community struggling to deal with a new wave of refugees from the conflict-ridden Middle East. (John A. Kohan)