Collection

Lavandera (1961)
Washerwoman

Woodcut on paper
height: 51cm
width: 41.5cm
Print

Donated by Olga Blinder 1996

58-1996

Throughout her career Olga Blinder has repeatedly returned to images of women, particularly rural and indigenous women, engaged in their daily tasks of nurturing, creating and working. During the 1960s this often took the form of striking woodcut images where the figures are expressed in boldly simplified forms. Blinder is represented in ESCALA with three images of women that are both specific and universal. Ñandutí shows women as creators, weaving the fine ñandutí lace. Sÿ is an image of woman as mother, nurturer and carer. In Lavandera we are presented with a woman at work. The washerwoman squats at her task, filling the frame with the jagged angles of her body as she pummels the garment against a washboard. The striking profile with its open mouth and triangular eye convey Blinder's sympathy for the daily grind of the woman's life, and suggest a debt to German Expressionism via Lívio Abramo, which whom she worked at this time.

Valerie Fraser, 2008