Loretto Obertdorf (Allgäu)

Emma Bormann

This early woodcut by Emma Bormann, done around 1930, was created using hundreds of small dots and lines, a stippling, to texture the buildings and the trees, she used a gouge for the snow in the foreground.

Impressionistic /realist printmaker Emma Bormann was born in Döbling near Vienna, Austria in 1887. She began as a student of Ludwig Michalek and Oscar Laske and continued her studies at the Munich School of Applied Arts between 1917 and 1921.

Beginning in 1926 she taught art at the University of Vienna. In Austria she began cutting her dramatic black and white woodcuts. In the 1950s she moved to the U.S.

The St. Loretto Chapel is a building complex on the southern outskirts of Oberstdorf in the Allgäu in Bavaria, Germany. It consists of three individual Roman Catholic chapels. Appachkapelle is the oldest Loretto Chapel dating prior to 1493. St. Maria Loretto is the largest and was built in 1657. St. Joseph's Chapel was built in 1671. Each loretto is a sanctuary.