Inspiration or Perspiration?
Enjoy this month's media feature—a clip from an interview with Siberian-born artist Esphyr Slobodkina.
She immigrated to New York in 1928 and attended the National Academy of Design until 1933. During the Great Depression, Slobodkina designed clothing and worked for several textile printing firms. At the same time, she developed an abstract style in her artworks, often making collages and three-dimensional assemblages. During the late 1930s, Slobodkina also began illustrating children's books, for which she is well known.
Hear what this fascinating artist has to say about inspiration in our QuickTime video.
QuickTime video
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Source: Virginia M. Mecklenburg. The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1989).
Pictured: Esphyr Slobodkina, born Russia 1908, As Indicated, about 1945, paper on paper mounted on paperboard, 16 1/8 x 12 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost.
Enjoy this month's media feature—a clip from an interview with Siberian-born artist Esphyr Slobodkina.
She immigrated to New York in 1928 and attended the National Academy of Design until 1933. During the Great Depression, Slobodkina designed clothing and worked for several textile printing firms. At the same time, she developed an abstract style in her artworks, often making collages and three-dimensional assemblages. During the late 1930s, Slobodkina also began illustrating children's books, for which she is well known.