(American, 1902 - 1988 )
Isabel Bishop was a leading painter and printmaker in
In 1925, the same year she realised Nude, she turned to etching, beginning with nude studies and then turning to vignettes of everyday life. The etching series she made in the 1920’s represent isolated figures like nudes, seated women or a men’s head. Compared to her later etchings production in the 1930’s where she engraves group of people or figures forming relationships, her early work is more intimate.
Isabel Bishop
Men Playing Cards
Pen, ink, and pencil on cream wove paper
7.9 x 6.75
“Though the undressed model is fun to draw, the requirement of relevance fro painting is more strict. Presenting a specific human being in such an unusual position for the general eye, as having no clothes on, brings an extra term to the argument, that is, unless a larger statement is reached. Traditionally, the nude was used to express formulations about life as larger-than-life; as Heroic or Ideal. But what shall provide the larger statement when these attitudes are rejected - as we do, in fact, reject them!
My attempted solution is to try for mobility in the form. When mobility is introduced into a picture, the possibility is expressed that whatever is represented there can change its position, though all may be described as still. This communication, which must be made through the total form in the picture (and is quite a different thing from movement), releases the content! Potential for change opens the door to so much. Were mobility achieved, the limitations of the specific subject could be both kept and transcended, nudity becoming a term in the larger theme – no longer an extra term in the argument or subject.[1]”
Isabel Bishop
Nude
Etching
6.5 x 5.5
1925
The artist’s first recorded print.