Bertha Landers (1911–1996). Talpa, New Mexico. Undated. Lithograph, no. 19/25. 13 3/4 x 16 3/8 in. Sheet: 16 1/4 x 19 1/8 in. Signed l/r; titled and numbered l/l. Full margins, fine condition.
$1,800.00
Out of stock
In this lithograph, Bertha Landers approached her subject with a singular vision. It is “Decoration Day,” today known as Memorial Day. The scene is in Talpa, a remote village in northern New Mexico. The women visiting the cemetery adorn the rough-hewn crosses with simple flower wreaths. The artist has infused the picture with a kind of animism, in contrast to the graveyard setting. The sky is somewhat brooding, while the church structure, foliage, and figures all pulse with a fluid energy. One has the sense that the artist wished to convey the perception that life continues, while we are just passing through.
Bertha Landers was born in Texas, and spent her formative years there. Ostensibly trained to be a teacher at the Sul Ross State Teachers College in Alpine, Texas, Landers went on to pursue her art study at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center and at the Arts Students League of New York under Reginald Marsh. Back in Texas, at the Dallas art Institute, she continued study with Olin Travis, Henry Varnum Poor, and Arnold Blanch. She developed her modernist printmaking, in addition to her painting practice. Landers became close friends with Kelly Fearing, and she was associated with the Fort Worth Circle.
During the Great Depression, Landers participated in the Texas section of the Federal Arts Project. Then in the 1940s, she headed the newly established Visual Education Department at the Dallas Public Library, which was perhaps the first public audiovisual department in the country. During the early 1950s, she was director of Art, Music and Film for the Kansas City Public Library in Missouri. Later in the 1950s, Landers moved to California, and established the Landers Film and Video Reviews, a successful journal that remained in publication from 1956 until 1992.
Landers exhibited her work nationally in at least seventy-five museum shows, winning numerous awards for her prints. She was a member of the Dallas Art Association, the Dallas Artists League, the Dallas Print Society, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Southern Printmakers, the Southern States Art league, the Texas Fine Arts Association, and the Texas Printmakers.
Refs.: Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940; Kovinick & Kovinick, An encyclopedia of women artists of the American West; Powers & Powers, Texas Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists; Vogel, Images: The World of Donald Vogel and Valley House Gallery.
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