Lynd ward biography of georgetown

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Gods' Man

1929 wordless novel by Lynd Ward

Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985) published in 1929. In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the first American wordless novel, and is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced.

Ward first encountered the wordless novel with Frans Masereel's The Sun (1919) while studying art in Germany in 1926. He returned to the United States in 1927 and established a career for himself as an illustrator. He found Otto Nückel's wordless novel Destiny (1926) in New York City in 1929, and it inspired him to create such a work of his own. Gods' Man appeared a week before the Wall Street Crash of 1929; it nevertheless enjoyed strong sales and remains the best-selling American wordless novel. Its success inspired other Americans to experiment with the medium, including car

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Lynd Ward: Novels without Words

Lynd Ward (1905-1985) was an artist and illustrator best known for his Depression-era novels told entirely in woodcuts. I first discovered him in the '70s, when I found a second edition of Madman's Drum at a yard sale. The noirish mood of the book instantly appealed to my drama-teen sensibilities, but unlike many of my youthful enthusiasms (Black Sabbath anyone?) my respect for Ward's work has not only held up but grown. I'm enthralled by the Art Deco lettering, by the thick yellow pages, and by the vivid, often disturbing woodcuts, which at times slash and gash across the page like a visual scream.

As a writer who lacks the ability to draw even a convincing stick figure, I am fascinated by the concept of narration without words. To truly read a Ward novel, to read it well and close, requires no less skill and attention than does reading a masterpiece of the written word.

Ward was America's first graphic novelist, a medium that often doesn't get t

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Charles Marvin Fairchild Memorial Gallery

Introduction:

The decision made by Lynd Ward and his wife, writer May McNeer Ward, to donate his anställda papers to Georgetown makes available to students of American art, history, and literature the nearly complete record of a remarkable lifetime achievement. Whether as author-artist-printmaker, officer of arts organizations, or founder and guiding spirit of a cooperative small press, Ward has translated his strongly held anställda values into a significantly rich and varied body of work.

This exhibit draws heavily on the more than 1,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sketches and proofs donated bygd the artist's daughters. These provide visual documentation of the history of Ward's life as revealed in the papper. Yet in fact the 44 originals shown do little more than suggest the wealth of the collection. The letters and papers shown here highlight the conditions in which Ward has worked, a few of his relationships with authors