Strollers

Edgar Dorsey Taylor

"Strollers" is a relief print, a woodcut by American modernist printmaker Edgar Dorsey Taylor (1904-1978), done around 1966. The image measures 15-3/8 x 20-1/2 inches . It is pencil signed, titled, and annotated "Hand Printed Proof, 2nd State" by the artist in the lower margin, the edition size is not known. This impression was hand-printed by the artist on a sheet of ivory hosho paper that measures 19-1/2 x 24 inches. The gallery inventory for this work is 8354.

By the late 1960s Edgar Dorsey Taylor had abandoned the lithography and painting that had launched his career to focus entirely on woodcuts. As well, his imagery had altered from straightforward representation, executed in the stylized dynamism of 1920s and ‘30s realism, to a cacophony of simplified, abstracted forms and repeat-pattern texture. Now, less interested in the obvious, his later works no longer told a linear story, but seemed to portray a train of thought, instead, ideas that read like mysterious narratives. The figures in Strollers seem to have been plucked off Fifth Avenue in their too fashionable attire for the rustic landscape in which they are strolling.

California artist Edgar Dorsey Taylor studied with Hans Hofmann in Germany in the 1920s, and his continued admiration for the work of German Expressionists remained an element of his style throughout his career. Bold, shapely abstraction held as much power in Taylor’s representation of landscapes as his images of the human condition, and sorrow, joy, and humor played out in equal measure in his woodcuts, paintings, and stained glass.

Edgar Dorsey Taylor, painter, printmaker, mosaic muralist, and teacher, was born in Grass Valley, California on July 15, 1904, to Adelaide and Edgar M. Taylor. He worked in mines and sawmills to pay for his education and earned his BA from the University of California Berkeley in 1928. After graduation, he worked for a year in the commercial art field before traveling to France, Italy, and Germany where he studied with Hans Hoffman.

Taylor returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in January 1930 and enrolled once again at the UC Berkeley where he earned his MA in 1932. He was awarded the Tauffig Traveling Fellowship and traveled for a year, studying in Germany, Italy, Sicily, Greece, Crete, and the Anatolian peninsula. Upon returning in 1933, Taylor taught for one year at the UC Berkeley. On July 2, 1934, he married Lois Chambers.

During the Depression, Taylor worked for the WPA's California Federal Art Project. Among the projects he headed was a stained glass window he designed for Herbert Hoover Middle School in Oakland, which was completed 1938. Taylor also designed a stained glass map for the Pacific House at the Golden Gate International Exposition held at San Francisco’s Treasure Island in 1939. In 1940, he was among the group of twenty artists who produced lithographs for Contemporary Graphics, a series of original prints published by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Taylor moved to Texas and taught art at the University of Texas at Austin in 1942 and, after his move to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, he taught at the University of Southern California.

During his career, Taylor worked in oil, watercolor, lithography, conté crayon, mosaic, and stained glass until 1959 after which he concentrated entirely on woodcut. In 1969, the Plantin Press of Los Angeles published his book, Baja California Woodcuts. He also produced woodcuts to illustrate Richard E. Lingenfelter’s book Presses of the Pacific Islands, 1817-1867: A History of the First Half Century of Printing in the Pacific Islands.

Edgar Dorsey Taylor died in Los Angeles on March 28, 1978.