Printmakers You Should Know: Elizabeth Olds

With a new year underway it's time to learn about some new artists, so today we're going to take a look at Elizabeth Olds (1896-1991).

Elizabeth Olds in 1937, inspecting a fresh print.

Born in Minneapolis, Olds received her artistic education at the city's School of Art. After winning a scholarship, she then studied at the Art Students League for three years, with one of her most influential teachers being George Luks, an American realist painter associated with the Ashcan group. Known for its gritty, unfiltered depictions of urban life, Ashcan philosophies would influence Olds and her choice of subject matter. In 1925 she moved to Europe to continue her studies, and became the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. She remained abroad for four years, working as both an artist and as a bareback rider for the Cirque d'Hiver, which she had been painting.

Olds came back to the United States in 1929, right at the onset of the Great Depression. In 1932, after viewing Jose Clemente Orozco's murals at Dartmouth College, then still in progress, she felt inspired to incorporate more overt political themes in her work. In 1933, she moved to Ohama, Nebraska to paint family portraits for industrialist Samuel Rees, but she soon became frustrated with the project and began researching other means to express her growing awareness of the economic plight of the time. Once she began exploring lithography at Rees' printing business studio, she had found a way to do just that.

Here is that print she's looking at: Elizabeth Olds, Miners, 1937, color lithograph. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/miners-18996

From 1933 to 1934 Olds participated in the Omaha branch of the Public Works of Art Project, the predecessor to the Federal Art Project (though philosophically they're pretty different. The PWAP focused on professional artists who had already won some critical acclaim. The FAP was open to anyone who described themselves as an artist and also provided classes and workshops for non-artists). She created lithographs that explored the hardships of Depression life, depicting bread lines, shelters, and entertainments of the homeless. She also highlighted the grittiness that often accompanied manual work.

Elizabeth Olds, Miss Manchester's Musical Program for Homeless Men, 1933, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/miss-manchesters-musical-program-homeless-men-18998

Taking advantage of lithography's affinity with drawing, Olds created legible, powerful images that underscore the physicality of work. In the Stockyard Series, for instance, Olds depicts every aspect of preparing beef for the public market, from slaughter to packaging. She very much believed in making her work accessible to general audiences, reflecting broader social beliefs of the period. As historian Victoria Grieve argues in The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture, for artists and cultural proponents such as Olds, art wasn't a rare commodity to be enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy and leisured classes. Rather, the creation and sharing of art and culture was what underpinned democracy itself. By participating in the creation and reception of culture, whether through making art objects, visiting museums, or other activities, proponents of the middlebrow culture argued that the working classes claimed greater agency over their lives, and became more likely to contribute meaningfully to the republican process itself. For Olds, this meant depicting the lives of the common people, the people who worked in mines, slaughterhouses, and other places not commonly shown in the aesthetic realm. By seeing themselves in these lithographs, workers would be able to sympathize with Olds' lithographs.

Elizabeth Olds, The Knocker, from the Stockyard Series, 1934, lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/knocker-stockyard-series-18989

As the 1930s progressed, Olds became more overtly political in her work, and would go on to produce cartoons for magazines such as The New Masses, The New Republic, and Fortune. In one of her most strongly political works 1939 A.D., Olds updates the story of Christ expunging the temple of moneylenders. Now relocated to modern-day Wall Street, Christ marches in solidarity with the working classes while driving away avaricious businessmen and investors. It's a striking images that continues to resonate today.

Elizabeth Olds, 1939, A.D., lithograph on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/1939-ad-18999

Lithography wasn't the only medium Olds used for printing. Along with other printmakers such as Anthony Velonis (another printmaker you'll get to know here), she was also a strong proponent for silkscreen as a fine art medium. In 1939, she worked with the Silk Screen Unit for the Federal Art Project, and created several silkscreen prints herself. Some were single-color images, while others incorporated several colors. Like her lithographs, her screen prints focused on the lives of the working classes, particularly during moments of leisure.

Elizabeth Olds, Concert, ca. 1938-1939, screenprint on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/concert-18980

Elizabeth Olds, Tourists, ca. 1938-1939, screenprint on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/tourists-19019

Elizabeth Olds, Me and Her, 1940, screenprint on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/me-and-her-18991

Elizabeth Olds, Carousel, ca. 1940, screenprint on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/carousel-18978

After World War II and the end of the WPA era, Olds refocused her creative energies on other endeavors, experimenting with new mediums such as relief printing. She also branched into children's literature, writing and illustrating six books. Hearkening back to her WPA era content, she focused on industrialism in three of her books, introducing children to trains, the petroleum industry, and firefighting. Plip Plop Ploppie, a 1962 book about a seal, showcases her growing interest in woodblock printing. Not to mention it has one of the most adorable covers I've seen in recent memory.

Elizabeth Olds, Plip Plop Ploppie, 1962, written and illustrated by Elizabeth Olds. Images courtesy of https://www.etsy.com/listing/488021874/plop-plop-ploppie-seal-book-elizabeth

She also explored different printmaking techniques, often combining different media to create new works. She eventually moved to Florida, and remained there until her death in 1991.

Elizabeth Olds, Birds in a Hurry, 1954, color woodcut and screenprint on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/birds-hurry-18975

Elizabeth Olds, Two Owls, 1968, woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/two-owls-19020

In a lot of ways, the career of Elizabeth Olds reminds me of the work of another woman printmaker, Barbara Latham. Both experimented with a variety of media in different styles, and both worked in children's literature as well as fine art. With Olds, however, there is a much stronger social realist aspect with her work from the 1930s, reflecting the ongoing influence of the Ashcan school as well as her commitment to popular social beliefs of the period. She is definitely a printmaker you should know.

Want to learn more?

https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/1781/Olds/Elizabeth

http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00512

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1358896