Indian Pottery Vendor
1935–43
Medium
Wood engraving
Dimensions
block: 10 x 7 3/4 in. (25.4 x 19.7 cm) sheet: 13 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. (34.9 x 26 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of the Work Projects Administration, New York, 1943
Accession Number
43.33.81
Tags
Art Historical Context
Created during the Great Depression as part of the Works Progress Administration’s art program, *Indian Pottery Vendor* captures a moment of everyday commerce with quiet dignity. Fritz Eichenberg, a German-born printmaker who emigrated to the United States in 1933, contributed this wood engraving to the WPA between 1935 and 1943. The project aimed to employ artists while documenting American life, and the resulting prints were distributed to public institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which received this impression as a gift in 1943. The medium of wood engraving lends itsel...
About the Artist
Fritz Eichenberg|WPA
Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990), born in Cologne, Germany, to a Jewish family, endured the harrowing bombings of World War I as a child, experiences that ignited his lifelong commitment to anti-war themes and social satire. After apprenticing as a printer and studying at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne, he honed his craft at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig under the mentorship ...