China Ducks

Wilhelmina (Mina) Schutz Pulsifer

The forms of four ducks standing among tall grasses are presented in an abstracted style that reads like stained-glass, with overlapping shapes and colors delineated by bold white and black lines. The arching shapes of the ducks’ necks and wings are contrasted by a grid pattern in the background, and a vibration is lent to the entire composition with the lightly offset printing of colors.

This image is a departure for Wilhelmina (Mina) Pulsifer, whose prior studies of printmaking were greatly informed by classical subjects and formal precision. Realistic portraits and images of daily life made way in the 1950s for unusual subjects executed in representational Abstraction. Pulsifer, whose artistic career began in the early 1920s, didn’t pursue printmaking until the 1940s, and even then her work still focused on people and places rendered in a traditional style. It appears that it wasn’t until she discovered color woodcut that she began to truly develop a style of her own, taking an interest in the world of Abstraction that dominated the art world at the time.

Mina Schutz Pulsifer (nee Wilhelmina Schutz) was born to Wilhelmina Elizabeth and Albert Scultz on 3 August 1897 in Leavenworth, Kansas. She graduated from St. Mary's Academy in Leavenworth and continued with art studies at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1923 she married George Pulsifer, a West Point graduate and retired Major in the U.S. Army, and the couple moved to San Diego the following year. In California, she continued her art training at the San Diego Academy of Fine Arts where she studied with Eugene De Vol and Otto H. Schneider. Later, she studied independently with painters Nicolai Fechin and Frederick Taubes.

In 1940, Pulsifer exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco and, in that decade, she turned her attention to printmaking, particularly lithography. Associated American Artists of New York published two of her lithographs, La Familia in 1947 and Paulyn in 1950. Her lithographs were also included in two European traveling shows organized by the Boston Public Library. Mina Schutz Pulsifer died on February 14, 1989 in Fallbrook, California.