Georges Schreiber

From Arkansas, 1941.
Georges Schreiber, 1904-1977.
Lithograph. Distributed by Associated American Artists.
LC-USZC4-6562
© Estate of Georges Schreiber. (49)

The magnificent achievements of such photographers as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange in documenting America and Americans during the Depression and World War II have their graphic counterpart in the work of printmakers from the same period, including Georges Schreiber, who visited all forty-eight states, while working for the WPA between 1936 and 1939.

Note: Georges Schreiber: An outstanding twentieth century American painter, sculptor and lithographer, Georges Schreiber was born and raised in Belgium and first studied at the Academies of Fine Arts in both Berlin and Dusseldorf. He then completed his artistic education in London, Paris, Rome and Florence. Schreiber first moved to New York in 1929 and during the following decades his art underwent significant changes. He first gained a national reputation by creating Art Deco imagery and won major awards from the Art Institute of Chicago (1932) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1939). In the 1940's, however, Schreiber's art reflected a style more akin to American Regionalist artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. In particular, his lithographs of the rural poor in both the West and South were riveting examples of American realism. As well as creating original lithographs, much of Schreiber's efforts at this time was directed towards writing and illustrating a number of fine books.
Georges Schreiber's last great period of artistic creativity (beginning around 1960) marked a deliberate turn towards modernist concerns and abstraction.
Such important international institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and the Library of Congress and the White House Library, Washington, include Schreiber's lithographs in their permanent collections. Georges Schreiber was a full member of the Art Alliance of America.