Jacques Hnizdovsky, 1915-1985

By Zachary Vincent

Jacques Hnizdovsky painting religious calendars for Brown & Bigelow, c. 1950, photograph (photographer unknown), courtesty of Hnizdovsky Gallery

Cold-War era cultural diplomacy has been presented to generations of young art historians as a battle between the strict Realism of the Eastern bloc and the Abstract Expressionism of the West, particularly in the United States. While this narrative is compelling, and is supported by a great deal of evidence, its hegemony among academics has left behind studies of state-sponsored art activity which did not conform to the rigid style guidelines of either Realism or Expressionism. As a result, artists like the subject of this Born This Week article have been remembered (when they are) as entirely unconnected to American cultural diplomacy, while, in actuality, they were central to it, and can help today’s historians to view the past in a more nuanced way.

Jacques Hnizdovsky, born Yakiv Yakovych Hnizdovsky on 27th January 1915, was the unlikeliest of American diplomats. Born in Pylypche, modern Ukraine, Hnizdovsky was present for many of the defining, destructive moments of twentieth-century European history. Much of his family was forced to exile in Siberia by the U.S.S.R. for their political leanings and landowner status. Hnizdovsky himself was arrested by Polish authorities in 1926 when his boarding school roommate hid political materials under Hnizdovsky’s bed to avoid capture. Even after that incident, the young artist was studying art in Zagreb when the Second World War made living in the city untenable and Hnizdovsky found himself in a German displaced persons camp before finally arriving in the United States, where he was to live the remainder of his life, in 1949.

The Sheep, 1961, woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum

These events gave Hnizdovsky grave misgivings about politics, a self-described “distaste” that lasted the artist’s entire life. And yet, art which was never intended to be political often finds itself in the strangest of political circumstances. Such was certainly the case for the young American immigrant when his woodcarvings and etchings were first selected by the U.S. government for a Contemporary U.S. Graphic Arts exhibition in the U.S.S.R. in 1963 and one in Japan in 1967. Hnizdovsky’s work was displayed by a Western power in arenas of great contention contemporary to the famous displays of Abstract Expressionism by the likes of Jackson Pollock (incidentally also born this week, on 28th January 1912). And yet, as evidenced by quirky figurism and rural influence of Hnizdovsky’s most famous and bestselling woodcut The Sheep (1961), Hnizdovsky was far from an Abstract Expressionist. How can this be explained?

Hnizdovsky’s presence on the world stage betrays important differences of thought within the U.S. diplomatic establishment during the Cold War. Recent scholarship has done much to make clear the multitude of reasons officials in the U.S. government had for purchasing the artworks they did during this period, in a process which often involved justifying to the American public at-large the commissions given to foreign-born (or even foreign-sounding) artists like Hnizdovsky and sculptor Theodore Roszak. It is significant that the government was willing to advocate for these Eastern European immigrants, especially because many would have been unreasonably suspected of foreign allegiance during the manic purges of McCarthyism just a decade before. Thus, the government’s support of Hnizdovsky and others can be seen as representative of one of the most important shifts in Cold War American society, away from the period most characterised by rampant xenophobia and towards an embrace of ‘global’ culture as evidence of America’s supposed benevolence.

Many roots of today’s globalised society can be found in works by Hnizdovsky. He made extensive use of the Japanese mulberry bark paper washi, while German Expressionism and historic Japanese printmaking almost certainly influenced his use of woodblock and etchings as media. His subjects, furthermore, which included illustrations for books as wide-ranging as English Romantic poetry collections, contemporary American poetry, and Latin-language Medieval texts, evidences a profound meeting of western culture with diverse global styles. U.S. government patronage of Hnizdovsky’s work, then, symbolises its own developing commitment to cultural globalisation as an official policy in its battle with the U.S.S.R. for global influence.

Cut Down, 1978, woodcut, Minneapolis Institute of Art

While not the dramatic break with historic artistic convention represented by Abstract Expressionism, Hnizdovsky’s art was nonetheless distinctively modern. The artist’s own abandonment of commercial painting for the company Brown & Bigelow, which made calendars and other popular public goods during his time in Saint Paul, Minnesota, brought a rejection of Realism. His subsequent studies of natural geometric patterns and perception evidenced in works like Cut Down (1978) made commentary on modernist themes using all the tools related to his medium, only made possible by Hnizdovsky’s globetrotting life experience. His expression of personal and artistic freedom was what the United States sought to purchase, and, thus, align its global image with. Freedom from Realism, freedom from Communist Eastern Europe, and freedom from popular consumerism.

While the U.S. government’s image work in displaying Jacques Hnizdovsky’s art may have been just that, it complicates in important ways lingering conceptions of Cold War cultural strategy and power dynamics. It serves as a reminder of the value in studying oft-forgotten artists like Hnizdovsky and brings to life debates about the Cold War and globalisation, publicity vs reality in national image, and the true meaning of artistic freedom in modern society.

Bibliography

‘Biography.’ Hnizdovsky Gallery. Accessed 20th January 2025. https://hnizdovsky.gallery/pages/biography.

‘Chronology.’ Hnizdovsky Gallery. Accessed 20th January 2025. https://hnizdovsky.gallery/pages/chronology.

‘Cut Down.’ Minneapolis Institute of Art. Accessed 20th January 2025. https://collections.artsmia.org/art/132628/cut-down-jacques-hnizdovsky.

McComas, Jennifer. ‘Reconstructing Cold War Cultural Diplomacy Exhibitions: The Case of Advancing American Art.’ Stedelijk Studies Journal 2 (2015). https://doi.org/10.54533/stedstud.vol002.art07.

Taylor, Alex J. The Unknown Political Prisoner (Defiant and Triumphant) 1952 by Theodore Roszak. Tate Research Publication, 2018.

‘The Sheep.’ Smithsonian American Art Museum. Accessed 20th January 2025. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/sheep-10568.