Emil Janel
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Emil Janel (1897–1981) was an artist born in Orsa Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden. Although he was a respected still life painter, he is mainly known for his caricatures in the Scandinavian flat-plane style of woodcarving, and is considered by many to be the best of his genre.
Emil is said to have referred to his style as "exaggerated realism".
In 1923 Janel moved to Canada, then to Seattle, Washington. After some encouragement by a local store keeper, he eventually settled in San Francisco with his wife and began study at what is now the San Francisco Art Institute. During the 1930's, he spent considerable time at Russian River, where he produced carvings of a local species of Alder Wood. It is said that he preferred that particular medium because of the similarity to flesh tones, and that he kept his carvings in a bucket of water to keep them wet while working on them. He used very thin aniline dyes on the non-flesh portions of his carvings. In 1965 he was awarded The Royal Order of Vasa (Kungliga Vasaorden) by the king of Sweden for his artistic contributions. In 1981 Emil Janel died in San Francisco.
Over 35 Janel carvings are part of the permanent collection of the American Swedish Institute, donated by collector, artist and author Ira Weissman.
[edit] References
- Master American Woodcarver - Emil Janel. Ira Weissman & John Matthews 1984
- The Little People of Emil Janel. Thelma Winnie, October 1964 edition of Western Collector Magazine
