Swings by Ethel Spowers
8"x10" ($40) | 11"x14" ($85) | 16"x20" ($275) | 20"x24" ($675) | 30"x40" ($1,950)

Melbourne-born Ethel Spowers, a key figure in modern linocut art, soars in her 1932 piece Swings. The artist’s earlier illustrations for children’s stories demonstrate Spowers’s interest in linocut, but it wasn’t until coming across artist Claude Flight’s 1927 book Lino-Cuts at a Melbourne bookstore that she devoted herself to the medium through which she would produce her most famous works. Flight was a pioneering and eccentric linocut printmaker and teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art in London who touted the potential of linocut as a vibrant, modern way of making art–and one that produced accessible pieces, too. Spowers, the daughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate, became hooked on both the form and Flight’s idea that art should be affordable to all. She enrolled at the Grosvenor School, where she studied under Flight between 1928 and 1929 and emerged as a titan of linocut. You can see why Swings is a perfect new edition for us to release–after all, we believe that art should be for everyone!

Spowers incorporates rhythmical expression, simplified forms, and bold, flat, harmonic color into her work. While her subject matter—often children and their activities—remained constant throughout her career, her style evolved. Swings is a beautiful demonstration of that evolution. The movement, dynamism and sense of freedom in the piece is a perfect representation of its subject matter. You can almost feel the breeze flowing through your own hair looking at it, and remember what it felt like to get a starting push.

On her return to Australia in 1929, Spowers co-established the Contemporary Art Group with like-minded artists in order to promote modernist art and defend it against conservative critics. Spowers, once the student and later the phenomenon, championed her former teacher Flight’s work, acting as his agent and promoting and exhibiting his linocuts along with those of his students.

Spowers' own work was showcased in multiple exhibitions in Australia and abroad until her death in 1947. Her contributions to the modern linocut movement continue to be celebrated, with her works, including Swings, now held in major collections internationally. Wheee!

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New! Swing back to your youth with Ethel Spowers.