Wanda Gág’s World

Gág wrote of her desire to convey what she called “the principle”—a compositional balance in which a landscape’s forms move both independently and harmoniously. She explained how she grappled with this idea in a 1926 letter to her gallerist Carl Zigrosser:

“I am out on the hills every day now, in pursuit of the old Principle. He still is elusive tho ubiquitous. But I take a grab here and a grab there, and make him yield up a fragment of a secret each day. Yesterday, while trying to catch him . . . I had an exhilarating struggle with him. I was literally limp at the end of it, but came out of it with what I think is a solid drawing. . . . Today the sky is very blue, the trees unbelievably brilliant, and the air is so clear it appears to be brittle. I must eat my lunch and dash out on the hills. Who knows what the Principle may yield up on a day like this!”