A View from the Vault: Jacques Hnizdovsky’s Linocut ‘Turkey’

Library, Museums and Press Staff

November 8, 2023

By Jan Gardner Broske, Museums

“A View from the Vault” showcases some of the unique, notable or rare items that are a part of the Special Collections and Museums holdings at the University of Delaware. Each month, we highlight a different item and share interesting facts or intriguing histories about it. If you are interested in seeing any of the materials featured in person or want to learn more about anything showcased in the series, please contact Special Collections and Museums at AskSpec or AskMuseums.

Jacques Hnizdovsky (Ukraine, 1915-1985)

Turkey

1962 (edition 38/50)

Linocut on Washi (mulberry bark) paper

26 7/8 inches x 11 5/8 inches

Museums Collections

The preparation for Thanksgiving is probably one of the most significant activities in the United States in November. Although the traditional feast surrounding this holiday has evolved, the turkey, nevertheless, remains as the avatar of the season. Selectively bred domesticated turkeys were brought into the United States from Spain, Mexico and England.

In this rare linocut, Ukrainian-born artist Jacques Hnizdovsky chooses a frontal view of a Tom, or male, bird, emphasizing its exaggerated breast in a smoothly lobed form. The linocut medium is well-suited for this image in that its soft linoleum surface can be carved in curvilinear fashion, providing a consistent surface for dense inking. Details such as the snood (flesh over the beak), wattle (neck), legs, feet and spurs are delineated in more intricate and varying detail, given the flexibility of manipulating this medium.

Hnizdovsky inked the surface, placed the soft fibrous paper over the image, then rubbed a wooden spoon quickly yet meticulously across the paper’s surface before the ink dried. Each print (also called a proof) was then lifted off the linocut block, and individually signed, titled and numbered by the artist as he finished it.

This image, with its simple and elegant contour, belies Hnizdovsky’s characteristically intense attention to the most minute detailing of each cut and his eye for the smooth and seamless creature presented in the finished print.