Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson

Walter Anderson (1903-1965), an artist known for his vibrant watercolors, murals, pottery, and sculpture, also carved more than 300 linocuts. Among these were the first monumental block prints in American art. When Picasso produced his first large prints in 1952, Anderson\'s six-foot fairy tale linocuts were already hanging in museums in Memphis and New York.

Between 1933 and 1950, when American printmakers were restricted by the size of paper and competition rules, Anderson was carving blocks ranging in size from 6" x 4" to 6' x 4'. Gulf Coast flora and fauna, and myths, fairy tales, and legends inspired the images which he offered as affordable art to an uninterested public.

Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson features full-color and black-and-white reproductions of over 250 of the artist\'s prints. Timeless, dynamic syntheses of natural form or folklore, they have earned recognition in the United States and abroad.

The volume includes essays by Mary Anderson Pickard, the artist\'s elder daughter, and by Patricia Pinson, curator of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, with a chronology by Christopher Maurer, author of Fortune\'s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson (University Press of Mississippi).

Mary Anderson Pickard lives and paints in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Patricia Pinson is the editor of The Art of Walter Anderson (University Press of Mississippi).