Antoinette Gispen - Souvenir d'Italie

Framed multi-color woodcut by the Dutch artist Antoinette Gispen (Rotterdam, 1921 – 2015), titled "Souvenir d'Italie" and signed and dated 1978. Antoinette was the daughter of the acclaimed architect/interior designer Willen Gispen.

Antoinette Gispen was a versatile printmaker, painter, and mosaic artist who built up an extensive oeuvre over 65 years, comprising mosaics, tapestries, gable stones, lithographs, and woodcuts, among others. She exhibited at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Boijmans Van Beuningen, among others, and was a member of the Genootschap Kunstliefde from 1947, for which she received the Bernard Johan Kerkhof Prize in 1960. Later, she joined De Progressieven and the Amsterdam art circle Stuwing. Her style is expressive modernist: recognizable subjects in broad, flat color schemes with a decorative, stylized approach.

This woodcut depicts a sunny Italian landscape in warm ochre tones and deep shades of green, with palm trees and hills rendered in broad, stylized planes — a reminder of Italy, where Gispen stayed regularly in the 1960s and 70s and where she won a bronze medal in 1969 at the International Triennial of Woodcutting in Capri.