Untitled is a woodcut with color stencils from about 1953 by American artist, Ynez Johnston (1920-2019). It is pencil signed and editioned 66/75. This work was printed by the artist on a soft Japanese laid paper and the image measures 7-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches.
To create this image, layered color stencil was overlaid with woodcut printed in solid black. Johnston continues the theme of the voyage with two ships arriving in the port of a crowded city. She employed thin, labyrinthine linework that darts through the underlying mesh of color, creating a vibrant energy that makes the city and ships appear illuminated, as if lit in celebration against the black night sky. Johnston’s style borrows from ancient pictorial works found on cave walls and painted scrolls to produce imagery that echoes the past, yet her technique roots her firmly in mid-century modern aesthetic.
Scholar and curator Gerald Nordland wrote about Johnston's graphic work: “Johnston utilizes the multiple perspective devices of the etchings, flattens space, integrates foreground, mid-ground and background into a Byzantine-modern composition. The units of effect....has a forceful, expressive, and abstract quality not dissimilar to the stone tesserae in Byzantine mosaics. The total effect is formal, unique and masterful.”
Ynez Johnston
earned her BFA degree in 1941 and her MFA degree in 1946 from the University of
California, Berkeley. In 1949, she moved to Los Angeles where Leonard
Edmondson, a fellow artist, opened his studio to her.
Johnston taught at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Chouinard Art
Institute, California State College, University of Judaism, and the Otis Art
Institute. She was awarded the Anne Bremer Award, Huntington Hartford
Residence, Guggenheim Foundation Grant, Louis C. Tiffany Grant, James D. Phelan
Grant, MacDowell Colony Residency Grant, and the National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship three times. In 1992, the Fresno Art Museum honored Johnston
with their Distinguished Woman Artist award.
Johnston is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Fresno Art Museum, Grunwald Graphic Art Foundation, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Kennedy Museum of American Art, Krannert Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, National Museum of Israel, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Oakland Museum of California Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Worcester Art Museum.
