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Plowing

Plowing, 1920, Woodcut
Ilonka Karasz (Hungarian-born American, 1896 – 1981)
#2013.0001.0204

Ilonka Karasz was a Hungarian-born artist and designer who encouraged the spread of modern art and design in the United States. Karasz immigrated to New York City from Budapest in 1913, when she was seventeen years old, and became inspired by various avant-garde artists and designers who were working in the city. She eventually became an important figure in the fields of textile design and illustration in her own right, and was the founding director of Design Group, a firm made up of industrial designers, craftspeople, and artists. Karasz was inspired by both Modernism and folk art, and her designs were used in a variety of materials and objects such as textiles, wallpaper, rugs, ceramics, furnishings, tableware and toys. 

This simplified print of a man plowing a hill emphasizes the graphic quality of the woodblock medium.