The Lady I

Alfred A. Sessler

Alfred Sessler was hired in 1946 to create a printmaking department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and put together what became a major force in the teaching of printmaking in the 1950s through today. In his book "Progressive Printmakers" colleague Warrington Colescott notes in the section devoted to Sessler, on page 22 that:

"Alfred Sessler was a child of the crash of the post-World War I financial system, which led to the urban realities of unemployment and class struggle. The vigorous art that these conditions spawned was labeled 'social realism', which was a misnomer in Sessler's case, for he was anything but a realist. His stylized gnomic figures, with their exaggerated features, sometimes suggested the emotional kitsch of Disney but were expressed with the drawing finesse of a Hogarth."

"The Lady I" is such a work - a woman who looks like the weight of the world is on her back and shown in her face and eyes. Using soft-ground etching and fabrics Sessler covers her with textures that fade into black. Her nose, eyes and forehead are defined with etched lines and her face and shoulders emerge from an aquatint background.