Labor Cross

Fritz Eichenberg. Labor Cross. 1954.

Fritz Eichenberg *1901,1990† was an illustrator of the Russian novel. He carved wooden engravings, and was a lithographer. He left Nazi-Germany in its first year. In America he found some work with Roosevelt's WPA. In 1940 he became a Quaker. In 1949 he became an associate of Dorothy Day. To her newspaper, The Catholic Worker, he gave many pieces to be printed, often of the saints. His passion was expressed in a concerned social realism, that was immediately apparent in his art.

I saw twelve of his prints at Our Lady of Fatima in Hough, Cleveland, O. One was 'Labor Cross'. Perhaps, his most reproduced religious print is Christ of the Breadline. There is one in the basement of Saint Augustine's, Cleveland. I wonder if a suburban parish has an Eichenberg drawing?