Master woodcut artist honored at Elvehjem

An elective course in drawing turned the tide for then-UW pharmacy major Ray Gloeckler in 1946. Within a year he had changed his major to art education.

More than 200 prints later, Gloeckler has become one of the world’s seminal figures in woodcut engraving. The Elvehjem Museum of Art will honor his career with a retrospective exhibition, “Woodcuts by Ray Gloeckler,” opening Saturday, Nov. 13.

Gloeckler’s career includes teaching as well as being a master woodblock printmaker. After graduating from the UW with his bachelor’s degree in 1950 and his master’s degree in 1952, he became art supervisor for the school district in Tomah. Later, he took a position at Wisconsin State University, now UW-Oshkosh, as well as Eastern Michigan University and the community college in Flint, Mich. He returned to Madison in 1961 to teach in the Department of Art until he retired in 1993.

Gloeckler perfected the art of the woodcut. According to Andrew Stevens, Elvehjem curator of prints, drawings and photographs, Gloeckler has played a vital role in keeping the once-common art of wood engraving thriving in this country during the last half of the 20th century.

According to Stevens, Gloeckler had as keen an eye for the social milieu as he had for artistic composition. Contemporary students and members of the general public will be able to experience a particular view of the 1960s-1990s at the exhibition, Stevens says.

“His work is very witty, sometimes with a sharp edge, as when he satirized political figures in the late 1960s and when he poked fun at political correctness in the ’90s,” he says, adding that Gloeckler took special glee at rendering aspects of Wisconsin culture, ranging from the cult of the Green Bay Packers to the rarified sport of curling.

The exhibition also will provide a treatise on scale, Steven says.

“His smallest engravings are less than a square inch, but his woodcut can be as large as 5 feet tall,” he says.

The exhibition will open with a lecture by Gloeckler about his work at 5 p.m. on Nov. 13. A free public reception will follow. The exhibition runs through Tuesday, Jan. 25. For more information, visit http://www.lvm.wisc.edu/ or call 263-2246.