Werner Drewes
American, born Germany, 1899 - 1985Collage No. 307, 1977
Not on view
Woodcut, cut and pasted into collage on paper
Dimensions10 5/8 × 8 9/16 in.
Image: 8 15/16 × 7 5/16 in.
Museum Purchase, 2008.364
Werner Drewes was born as the son of a minister in Canig, Germany in 1899. He became a student of architecture and design at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. In 1923, he left Germany for Spain to study old masters such as El Greco and Velasquez. He moved to the United States in 1930 and became a citizen in 1936.
Drewes taught drawing at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Washington University in St. Louis. His printing work illustrates strong black and white contrasts, where the design is drawn on the surface of wood and then deeply undercut. The sections that are supposed to be white are cut away with a gouge or knife (illustrated in the deeply incised lines), leaving the remainder to print black.
