GAG, WANDA HAZEL

born March 11, 1893, New Ulm, Minn., U.S. died June 27, 1946, New York, N.Y. American artist and author whose dynamic visual style imbued the often commonplace subjects of both her serious art and her illustrated books for children with an intense vitality. Gg was the daughter of a Bohemian immigrant artist. Through high school she helped support her family by contributing drawings to a children's supplement to the Minneapolis Journal. She attended the St. Paul Art School on a scholarship, and during 191517 she attended the Minneapolis School of Art. In 1917 she traveled to New York City and entered the Art Students' League, where she studied with John Sloan and other noted teachers. A show of Gg's drawings, lithographs, and woodcuts at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City in 1926 brought her first recognition as a serious artist, and subsequent shows there in 1928, 1930, and 1940 increased her reputation. She was represented in the Museum of Modern Art's 1939 exhibition Art in Our Time. At the suggestion of a children's book editor, she wrote and illustrated Millions of Cats (1928), which became a classic children's book. Her subsequent books for children include The Funny Thing (1929), A.B.C. Bunny (1933), Gone Is Gone (1935), and Nothing at All (1941). She also translated and illustrated Tales from Grimm (1936), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), Three Gay Tales from Grimm (1943), and More Tales from Grimm (1947). Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings for the Years 19081917 (1940) was a memoir based on her journals.