If you don’t know the work of Ethel Mars (1876-1959), let me introduce you to a dynamic and highly influential artist with strong Ohio roots.
Now through Dec. 5, Capital University’s Schumacher Gallery is hosting the exhibition The French Connection: Midwestern Modernist Women, co-curated by James and Tara Keny. An excellent catalog with essay by Tara, a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Drawing and Prints Department and French professor at City University of New York, accompanies this exhibition.
Woodblock printing gained momentum as a serious medium for artists at the close of the 19th Century. Mars became a leader of this movement, which was influenced in part by the discovery of Japanese woodblock prints by Western artists, as well as the investigation of two-dimensional design possibilities found in modern painting of the time.
Thanks to the original research by the Kenys, new insights about Mars and her influence are presented in this exhibition.
From the catalog essay, Tara explains: “Ethel Mars, Maud Squire, Edna B. Hopkins, Blanche Lazzell, Alice Schille, Jane Peterson, Ada Gilmore and Mildred McMillen, all from the Midwest, formed the nucleus of an avant-garde circle of American women in Paris internationally celebrated for their innovative works on paper. All of these women, at the outbreak of the war, continued to work in New England art colonies, continuing to innovate and exchange ideas.
“While scholars have acknowledged their studies abroad, little was known of their reception. It is just now coming to the fore, thanks to a wider availability of French archival material, that they formed French artistic societies, participated on Salon juries and were frequently acknowledged by art critics in France as well as in all the major cities in the U.S. at the time.
“This exhibition aims to bring together these artists’ works for the first time since they were actively working together in order to better understand their artistic relationships with one another and their influence on the development of works on paper in France and the United States.”
Many of these artists returned to France often, Mars and Squire spending most of their lives there, including hiding from the Nazi occupation during World War II.
Nationally recognized local artist Michael McEwan teaches painting and drawing classes at his Clintonville area studio.
