The excitement of modern life : Lill Tschudi and the futuristic linocut

The short intermezzo between the Great War and World War II and especially the “roaring twenties” with their a thrill of speed were a period of radical social change and artistic development, and of vibrant metropolitan life and.

Born into a merchant family in the Swiss mountain canton of Glarus, Lill Tschudi (1911–2004) moved to London in 1929 to educate herself at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art.

She flourished in the imperial capital and soon gained wide recognition for her bold and often colourful modernist linocuts.

In the Anglo-Saxon world her reputation as an accomplished printmaker has lasted and her works continue to fetch good prices at auctions in Britain and Australia.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art holds some 120 of her prints in its permanent collection, while she has until to date never been distinguished with a solo exhibition in a public museum in her native Switzerland. This book, published to coincide with the first such display at Graphische Sammlung ETH Zurich, features some 50 of her unique linocuts.

Designed as a proper picture book, it shows her refined and expressive compositions with their captivating narrative in full-page plates, which are supplemented by informative essays. Text in English and German.