New for November 2019

November 1, 2019

New for November 2019

As we prepare for the coming Season of Advent and Christmas, I have selected three artworks from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection depicting the opening scene in the drama of the Incarnation, when the Angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary with the news she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah, the event recorded in Luke 1:26-38 known as the Annunciation. All three pieces now displayed on The Annunciation page of The Coming of Christ gallery in The Life of Christ section are prints in an Expressionist style, a European art movement dating from before World War I where exaggeration and extreme simplification of forms are used to evoke a direct, emotional response from the viewer. The bold linework and minimal facial markings in Dutch Graphic Artist Joan Collette's print of the Annunciation, which appeared in a November 1919 issue of the Dutch art and architecture journal, Wendingen, devoted to the art of the woodcut, show the influence of non-European, "tribal" sculpture on the early Expressionists.  In a charming linocut (left) by Czech Poet-Artist Bohuslav Reynek from the 1920s, we see an image of the Virgin Mary at prayer, enveloped in angelic light, whose simple outlines suggest folk art prints. The snake in the woodpile is an allusion to the serpent of Genesis 3:15, whose head will be crushed by "the seed of the woman," seen as a foreshading of the coming of Christ and his ultimate victory over Satan. The third print of the Annunciation in the series, an etching made sometime after World War II by German Artist Klaus Schroeter, shows the enduring power of Expressionism and its emotive distortion of forms. (John Kohan)