Gothic, not dated

The current exhibition at Georgetown University's Fairchild Gallery, on the fifth floor of Lauinger Library, celebrates the work of Hungarian-born artist Ralph Fabri (1894-1975) with a selection of 25 of his etchings donated last year. They represent only a portion of the collection (totaling 80) given to the Library's Special Collections Department by Phyl Newbeck, a descendant of the artist.

Ralph Fabri studied as an architect before receiving his M.A. from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest in 1918. He came to America in 1921 and was naturalized six years later, residing permanently in New York. Fabri became an active member of the art community, teaching at the Parsons School of Design in the late forties followed by the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and the National Academy School of Fine Arts. Concurrent with the latter position, he served as associate professor of art history at the City College, New York, until 1965. Fabri was an exacting and prolific printmaker, involved in several related organizations such as the Society of American Graphic Artists, the California Society of Etchers, and printmakers groups in Boston and Washington.

Indicative of Fabri's interest in literature, music, history and religion, the prints in the exhibition are arranged in four thematic groups according to their title: Literary Allusion, Visions of the Ideal, Music and Reverie, and Biblical. Stylistically they reflect the realist tradition popular at the time, and the current of surrealist abstraction brought to America by artists who fled the war in Europe. Several etchings reveal the psychological impact of the Second World War with motifs such as fighter planes and marching troops. Fabri was an active member of Artists for Victory, a non-profit organization of over 10,000 artists nationwide who sought to connect government, industry and businesses with artists to create visual material on behalf of the war effort.

A detailed introduction to the artist and a multimedia catalog of the exhibit can be seen at http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/fabri/index.htm.