Gargantua: Chapter XXV
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
1964.8.1944
Art Historical Context
**Gargantua: Chapter XXV is a compelling woodcut by Bernard Reder, created in 1942 and housed in the National Gallery of's Rosenwald Collection (Department CG-W, Portfolio classification). Reder, a Polish-born sculptor and printmaker who to the United States amid World War II, drew inspiration for this series from François Rabelais' satirical16th-century novel *argantua and Pantuel*. Chapter XXV likely evokes the tale's themes of giant appetites, folly, and human excess, rendered with Reder's characteristic intensity. The woodcut medium—carving images into wood blocks and printing with ink—le...
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...