Spider Lily

The American painter and printmaker Edna Boies Hopkins produced bright Modernist color woodcuts. After studying art in Cincinnati (Art Academy) and New York (Pratt Institute), she moved to Paris where she lived nearly a decade, remaining until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. She also traveled to Japan to study Japanese printmaking. Hopkins particularly excelled in the subject of flowers. Her depiction of this bouquet of spider lilies exemplifies her approach. In her hands, flowers become a bold, organic abstraction full of movement—here the white ribbon-like petals resemble fleeting fireworks.