Two Figures

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

American artist Lynd Ward created this image for the book Now That the Gods Are Dead by Llewelyn Powys, published by Equinox Press in 1932. A man and a woman embrace while kneeling upon a starry firmament, illustrating this passage: "The secret of life is to be found in gathering heightened realizations through the immediate subjective experiences of each of our mother-naked bodies. The office of our minds is to catch these supreme moments off their guard, revealing them in their undisguised reality as fragments of an unfolding scroll without an end and with a beginning." Ward's woodcuts blend stylistic and technical elements from the Northern Renaissance, the German expressionists, Art Deco, and American social realism. Their graphic quality confers a special urgency to the matters of social and spiritual progress held dear by the artist.

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