Fay Freedman (1922-1998) American, Hand Signed & Numbered Woodblock Print. Titled "Vas Is Dos?" bottom left. Numbered bottom center. Signed bottom right. All inscriptions in artist's hand in pencil. Depicts an orthodox Jewish man with cane contemplating an abstract modern art piece on a wall. 

Size: 21 1/8 x 17 3/8 in. 

#2559 . 

Fay Freedman (nee Diamond) was born in Gary, Indiana in 1922. Her extensive Jewish immigrant family had moved en masse to the industrial Midwest from Europe, eventually migrating to Detroit, Michigan. She studied at Wayne State University, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and the Detroit Institute of Fine Art, where she developed an abstract figural style that captured humorous moments in Jewish life. She married Arthur Freedman, an economics professor, in 1946, and the couple moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where Fay taught illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and studied sculpture with Waldemar Raemisch. In 1948 they moved to Lewiston, Maine, where she continued working in sculpture and explored other media, before settling permanently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1955. While raising two children, she pursued her interests in printmaking, including woodcuts, linoleum prints and etchings. She continued her studies at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art and the Barnes Foundation, as well as assuming instructor positions at colleges and art centers in the Philadelphia area. Shortly after her death during open heart surgery in 1998 the Wallingford Art Center, where she taught for several decades, created a gallery dedicated to her memory. The Fay Freedman Memorial Gallery continues to showcase fine arts exhibits, and contains an extensive collection of her many hundreds of prints.