Gargantua: Chapter VIII - Ses bijoux
1942
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
woodcut
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1964.8.1931
Art Historical Context
**Gargantua: Chapter - Ses bijoux** Bernard Reder, 2, woodcut* Created in 1942 amid the turmoil of World War II, Reder's *Gargantua: VIII - Ses bijoux* a striking woodcut from his illustrated portfolio inspired by François Rabelais' satirical 16th-century novel *argantua and Pantagruel*. Reder, an Austrian-born Jewish artist who fled Europe for the United States in the 1930s, channeled the book's grotesque humor and larger-than-life giants into bold, expressionistic prints. This chapter, titled "Ses bijoux" ("Her jewels"), likely depicts a fantastical scene from the ribald adventures of t...
About the Artist
Bernard Reder
Bernard Reder (1897–1963), born in Czernowitz, Bukovina—then part of Austria-Hungary and a vibrant center of Jewish and Hasidic culture—was the son of a Jewish innkeeper. At age four, he began drawing, but World War I interrupted his youth when, at 17, he was conscripted into the Austrian army and served in the trenches. After the war, Reder enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying...