Wanda Gág Day!

It’s that time of year again, the day to celebrate the birth of Wanda Gág: artist, writer, translator and free-spirited inspiration.

Yesterday I returned to her archives at the University of Minnesota where I finally was able to see the files which had been unavailable on my previous visits. There was a ton of material, including drawings, leftist magazines and numerous photographs.

First up is a panel from “Wanda in Wonderland”, a short-lived syndicated newspaper activity page for children (circa 1925):



Then I found this exquisite detail on a ‘puzzle box’ that Wanda had designed; the area pictured below was only about 3 inches wide:



There was a 1918 glimpse of a young Wanda exploring a new “look” on the rooftop of her New York apartment, she hadn’t yet committed to her signature hairstyle:


                                            Wanda Gág                           Lucile Lundquist

The next picture shows a different side of a much older Wanda, enjoying the company of fellow printmaking heavyweights (note that she’s sitting between two of her lovers), at a Rockwell Kent retrospective in 1939:


                  Rockwell Kent                         Carl Zigrosser                 Wanda Gág                   Adolph Dehn

Happy 122nd Birthday Wanda!



Photographs by Robert Janssen, excepting rooftop image

More on Wanda here…

UPDATE: Check out today’s installment from Brain Pickings, it’s not a coincidence…