Discipline: Visual Art – printmaking

Jacques Hnizdovsky

Discipline: Visual Art – printmaking
MacDowell fellowships: 1963, 1976, 1977
Jacques Hnizdovsky (1915-1985) was a Ukrainian-born American painter, printmaker, graphic designer, illustrator, and sculptor. He began his fine arts studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Germany's invasion of Poland and bombardment of Warsaw forced Jacques to flee and continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He was classically trained and had a great interest in portraiture, but Hnizdovsky was entirely self-taught in the art of printmaking. He created hundreds of paintings, pen and ink drawings, and watercolors, as well as more than 377 woodcuts, etchings, and linocuts after his move to the United States in 1949. He was greatly inspired by the woodblock printing of Japan as well as the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer. Hnizdovsky printed all his woodcuts and linocuts himself at his home studio. Woodcuts and linocuts were printed on washi, which is erroneously translated as "rice paper." Hnizdovsky has exhibited widely and his works are in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a large collection of his prints, as does the University of Mount Olive in North Carolina, which presumably has the largest collection of Hnizdovsky prints worldwide. Hnizdovsky designed numerous book covers and illustrated many books. He also designed several stamps and a souvenir sheet for the Ukrainian Plast postal service (issued in 1954 and 1961).