Exodus is a color woodcut created in 1958 by American artist Doris Seidler. This impression is pencil signed, titled, dated, and edition 6/20. Exodus was printed by the artist on a fibrous, ivory wove paper. The image size measures 13-1/8 x 18 inches.
Exodus is from the Greek word for departure and Exodus is the title of the second book of the Old Testament in which the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt. The Oxford Dictionary defines exodus as “a mass departure of people, especially emigrants.” According to World101 Global Era Issues, “More than 250 million people–roughly one out of every thirty people currently live in a county in which they were not born. With more people than ever on the move, it’s important to understand what drives migration because it’s increasingly likely that people will encounter–or become–migrants in their lifetime. People move for a lot of reasons, which are often called push and pull factors. Some people are pushed to leave their countries because of conflict, natural disaster, or persecution. The conflicts ongoing in Ukraine and Syria, for example, have displaced millions of people. The majority of migrants, however, are pulled to countries that offer better economic prospects for themselves or their families. It’s quite common that a mix of push and pull factors affects a person’s decision to migrate. In the past thirty years, the number of international migrants rose by over 80 percent.”
Doris Seidler, painter and printmaker, was born Doris Falkoff in London, England in 1912. Little is recorded of her early life but her father owned a leather goods shop on London’s West End. She married Bernard Seidler and together with their son, David, they sailed to New York in 1940. Seidler soon discovered Stanley W. Hayter's Atelier 17 where she learned the techniques of printmaking. She worked in the intaglio processes as well as woodcut, lucite engraving, and paper collage.
Doris accompanied her husband on a trip to Leningrad in the summer of 1958. She met a few of the city’s artists and later recorded her visit in “Report from Leningrad” which was published in the first issue of Artist’s Proof. In 1963, Seidler and fourteen other artists were commissioned by Business Week to create color woodcuts depicting U.S. cities. Her contribution was the city of Cleveland and her woodcut is illustrated on page 15 in “Woodcuts of Fifteen American Cities from the Business Week Collection.”
Seidler was a member of and exhibited with the Society of American Graphic Artists, the Society of Canadian Painter-Printmakers, and the Print Club of Philadelphia. She was awarded three fellowships to the McDowell Artist Colony and was a resident artist at the Tamarind Lithographic Workshop in Los Angeles. Her work was featured in numerous international solo exhibitions and, according to her curriculum vitae, garnered twenty-four awards. Doris Seidler’s work is represented in the collections of the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the British Museum, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Seattle Art Museum, Washington; the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Doris Seidler, witty and charming, was creating and promoting her art well into her nineties. She passed away in New York on 30 October 2010 at the age of ninety-seven years old.
