Picture in Focus: Wood Cut-Outs Nativity Scene by Gunther Keil

December 2, 2018

Picture in Focus: Wood Cut-Outs Nativity Scene by Gunther Keil

To celebrate the Season of Advent this year, I will be adding new manger displays from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection to the Nativity Sets and Scenes page of the Schools of Sacred Art section in the weeks leading up to Christmas. My first offering is an 18-piece ensemble of colored, cut-out figures, including Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child; the Shepherds and the Wise Men; the Angel Gabriel; and a host of animals by Berlin-born Woodcarver Gunther Keil. He combines the best of Old and New World folk art in Nativity scenes that are American in style with distinctive European touches, made from trees on the farm where he now lives in the Finger Lakes region of central New York. Keil's whimsical figures in silhouette can be rearranged to show all the key events in the Christmas story from the Annunciation to the Flight into Egypt, then, packed away into the stable with folding doors that doubles as a toy box! (John Kohan)