Asa Cheffetz

Asa Cheffetz was born in Buffalo, New York. He studied with Philip Hale in Boston and with Ivan Olinsky at the National Academy of Design in New York, and went on to produce wood engravings, etchings, and block prints. Wood engraving was Cheffetz' primary discipline, and his handsome landscapes of New England earned him numerous awards and honors.

Cheffetz was among the group of twentieth-century American printmakers who remained dedicated to realism. These artists observed their subjects carefully and captured them through precise details and faithful effects of light and shadow. The rendering of light and the different textures of the mowed fields and dirt road in Cheffetz' Down Montgomery Way reflect such craftsmanship.

[This is an excerpt from the interactive companion program to the videodisc American Art from the National Gallery of Art. Produced by the Department of Education Resources, this teaching resource is one of the Gallery's free-loan educational programs.]

Text © National Gallery of Art, 2020