Pictures in Focus: Two East European Ex Libris of the Madonna of the Clouds

May 25, 2011

Pictures in Focus: Two East European Ex Libris of the Madonna of the Clouds

The two Marian images I have on display this week are the works of Russian Graphic Artist Konstantin Kalynovych and Czech Print-maker Jindrich Pilecek and can be found in the East European Ex Libris gallery in the Schools of Sacred Art Section. Both depict the Madonna and Child enveloped by clouds. In Kalynovych's surrealistic book plate, the babe in swaddling clothes floats before his mother, whose wild tresses are mirrored in an inverted image of a tree on her chest. A canopy of clouds forms a halo above the Virgin Mary's head.  Pilecek depicts a mother and child, shorn of any religious trappings, looming large above a landscape. The elongated forms are framed by a billowing aureola of cumulous clouds. (John Kohan)