Hibiscus

Meta Cohen Hendel

Pioneering printmaker Meta Hendel Cohen carved from the woodblock a lively, curling branch of white hibiscus flowers, whose unfolding petals are tinged in lavender shadows. Appealing in Hendel’s work is the elegance she achieves with the relatively unforgiving medium, coaxing delicateness from the blocks and using the heavy application of ink, which lends a comfortable looseness to her compositions. Never over-grooming the block, she allows bits of the woodgrain to come through into the atmosphere surrounding the subject, adding a sense of movement.

This rare, unique color woodengraving, a relief print is by German born, San Francisco printmaker Meta Hendel. Hendel applied oil based color to the block using brushes that printed with painterly rich color, not unlike an oil painting on canvas. Each impression printed would be uniquely colored, a monoprint.

Hendel's work is discussed and shown on pages 474 - 477 of volume II in Emerging from the Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists Working in California, 1860-1960.

German born Meta Cohen Hendel attended the Académie Moderne in Paris studying with Fernand Leger and Amédée Ozenfant before emigrating to the U.S. in 1941.

Hendel developed a very unique approach to the color relief medium, which she described as wood engraving in 'How To Make A Color Wood Engraving' by Meta C. Hendel, published in the Magazine Of The San Francisco Women's Club, National League For Woman's Service, July 1946.

Colleagues in the art department at Bennington College in Vermont, filmed Hendel at work creating a color woodengraving in her San Francisco studio, though we have not yet found a copy.