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Paul Landacre
1893–1963
BirthplaceColumbus, Ohio, United States of America
Death placeLos Angeles, California, United States of America
BiographyA gifted California printmaker, Paul Landacre is widely considered one of his era's most talented creators of prints in the medium of wood-engraving. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Landacre pursued sports and horticulture at Ohio State University until 1915, when he suffered a crippling illness that permanently affected his mobility. He began drawing to help overcome his disability. Two years after moving to Southern California in 1916, he became a commercial illustrator for an advertising agency in San Diego. He moved to Los Angeles in 1922 to study printmaking at Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design). Three years later he married Margaret McCreery, who worked so that Landacre could concentrate on printmaking full time. Initially making relief prints using linoleum blocks, he experimented with lithography and etching before turning in 1927 to wood engraving, which from that point on became his sole medium. Self-taught in the technique, he did the exacting carving and printing himself for all but large editions of his prints. Landacre found a source of encouragement in Los Angeles book and art dealer Jake Zeitlin, Margaret's employer, who hosted an exhibition of his wood engravings in 1930 and subsequently published several books with Landacre's illustrations through his Primavera Press.
In 1930 Landacre made his first wood engravings inspired by the spectacular scenery of the Big Sur region of California's Pacific coast. During the following two decades, with his adopted state's landscape as his preferred subject, his national reputation grew, as evidenced by frequent awards and a steady flow of commissions for book illustrations. Landacre exhibited prints at the 1938 Venice Biennale and at the New York World's Fair in 1939, the year he was elected to the venerable National Academy of Design. By 1945, he had made about 150 wood engravings and 300 book illustrations, commercial designs, and other graphic works. He taught at Pomona College in Claremont, California in 1940, and at the Otis Art Institute from 1953 to 1963. That year, devastated by his wife's death from cancer, Landacre passed away from complications following a suicide attempt. He had lived into an era in which the popularity of relief prints declined in favor of experimental intaglio methods, but his reputation as one of California's leading twentieth-century printmakers survives.
In 1930 Landacre made his first wood engravings inspired by the spectacular scenery of the Big Sur region of California's Pacific coast. During the following two decades, with his adopted state's landscape as his preferred subject, his national reputation grew, as evidenced by frequent awards and a steady flow of commissions for book illustrations. Landacre exhibited prints at the 1938 Venice Biennale and at the New York World's Fair in 1939, the year he was elected to the venerable National Academy of Design. By 1945, he had made about 150 wood engravings and 300 book illustrations, commercial designs, and other graphic works. He taught at Pomona College in Claremont, California in 1940, and at the Otis Art Institute from 1953 to 1963. That year, devastated by his wife's death from cancer, Landacre passed away from complications following a suicide attempt. He had lived into an era in which the popularity of relief prints declined in favor of experimental intaglio methods, but his reputation as one of California's leading twentieth-century printmakers survives.