The Art and Afterlife of Gabrielle Wasow Brill
Gabrielle Wasow Brill was a Berlin-born printmaker who rebuilt her practice in Los Angeles after the 1959 Laurel Canyon fire took her home and studio in a single night. She trained at the art academies of Berlin and Vienna, taught in Italy, Vermont, and New York before settling in California, and spent the years after the fire making serigraphs and etchings that returned again and again to loss, renewal, and the beginnings of life.
This essay is written in respect for those in Los Angeles and beyond who have lost homes and studios to wildfire, past and present.
Who was Gabrielle Wasow Brill?
A native of Berlin, she trained at the art academies of Berlin and Vienna before the war, learning both classical draftsmanship and the modernist vocabulary that would shape postwar European art. Before she reached California she taught at the Mt. San Vigilio Country School in Italy, at Goddard College in Vermont, and at the Rye Country Day School in New York. She had settled in Los Angeles by 1949, and there she studied serigraphy, the silk-screen process, under Guy Maccoy at the Jepson Art Institute, and worked in etching and intaglio as well, the latter under Ernest Freed at the Otis Art Institute.
Her work traveled. She exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum, as well as in Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Pasadena, and Los Angeles. Years later, her prints were offered in California gallery auctions that also carried works by Chagall, Dalí, and Miró, where she was listed among newer talents rather than as their peer. The modern surface of her work held an older search underneath it: coherence after upheaval, renewal within the ruins.
The Fire, and What Came After
In 1959, fire swept through Laurel Canyon and destroyed her home and studio. The loss was total. Years of drawings, plates, and canvases were gone in a night, and every one of her paintings with them. Her husband, Klaus, designed the new home and studio the family built afterward, and Brill refused to treat the fire as an ending. "It gave me a very clean feeling," she said afterward. "Now I am going to do better." Soon after, The Los Angeles Times ran a quiet notice for a "Fire Victim Exhibit," its proceeds meant to "assist the artist in reassembling her materials."
She did not rebuild by copying what was lost. "Success is a danger," she said in a 1961 interview. "One can lose integrity by catering only to what sells well." At a moment when the California art world was turning toward spectacle and saturated color, her position was the opposite. She returned to the root of the work: seeing closely and translating the fragility of a living form into a printed line.
The change showed in her Beginnings series, some thirty drawings and intaglios shown at the Canoga Mission Gallery in 1966. Reviewing them, the Valley Times wrote that, "with compassion and penetrating curiosity, like an affectionate microscope," her pen and burin lifted "into focus the seed, the evolving embryonic form, the labyrinth of capillary systems, the multi-faceted cellular structure." The prints read almost as diagrams of beginnings, tracing the continuum between what ends and what starts over.
The Line, and the Hand That Drew It
The etching held in the Acanthus Archive belongs to this body of work. It is dated 1965 and inscribed "With love to Hilde." The image is a tangle of botanical forms, birds, and celestial signs, printed in warm sepia, and it seems to grow from inside itself. A bird's wing opens into a sunburst, a lion's mane resolves into floral geometry, and one form emerges from the traces of another.
Gabrielle Wasow Brill (German-American), Etching, 1965. Sepia intaglio print inscribed "With love to Hilde." Acanthus Archive.
A printed line holds the pressure of the hand that drew it.
The depth of the burin, the bite of the acid, the weight carried through the wrist: all of it is fixed in the plate and repeated in every pull. This is why the work still reads as intimate. It records not only what Brill saw, but the physical act of her seeing, in the same way a well-used chair keeps the marks of the hands that returned to it. An etched line and a worn armrest are both evidence, kept by the object, of a person who was once there. It is the reasoning behind how Acanthus approaches restoration: renewal keeps the record of a life rather than erasing it.
Brill's prints were not ornamental. They were an act of attention, made by hand against erasure, and they place her among printmakers whose work outlived them. In them, making becomes a form of remembering, and destruction and creation read less as opposites than as a single continuous line, one drawn out of the other.
Object in this Journal
Gabrielle Wasow Brill's 1965 etching, inscribed "With love to Hilde." This object remains in the Acanthus Archive.
It sits close to Reading Furniture Like a Text, which reads the same evidence of the hand in carved and handled wood.
See the collection's antique writing desks and secretaries.
Related reading
Thoughtfully Collected. Quietly Shared.
Endnotes
Archival sources consulted for this essay include:
Ventura County Star-Free Press, "Forum Gallery's May Exhibit Is Double-Feature," April 24, 1967. (Native of Berlin; Berlin and Vienna academies; taught at Mt. San Vigilio Country School, Italy, Goddard College, Vermont, and Rye Country Day School, New York; serigraphy at the Jepson Art Institute; etching at San Fernando Valley State College; intaglio with Ernest Freed, Otis Art Institute; exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum; 1966 awards at Sacramento, Del Mar, and the Seventh National Print and Drawing Show, Ohio University.)
S.F. Valley Times, "Artist's Work New, Superb," by Jeanne Good, October 5, 1966. (The Beginnings series at the Canoga Mission Gallery; the "affectionate microscope" passage.)
The Tribune (San Luis Obispo), "Success is a Danger, Says Artist," May 16, 1961. (Berlin and Vienna training; teaching in Italy, Vermont, and New York; serigraphy with Guy Maccoy; husband Klaus; the "clean feeling" and "Success is a danger" quotations; exhibition at a Boston museum.)
Whittier gallery notice, "September Art Display At Gallery." (German-born, Berlin and Vienna training; serigraphy with Guy Maccoy (spelled "McCoy" in the notice) at the Jepson Art Institute; resident of Los Angeles since 1949; exhibited in Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Pasadena, and Los Angeles.)
Thousand Oaks Chronicle, "T.O. Art Association Meets Artist Tonight," del fischer, women's viewpoint. (Came to California by way of Italy with a first stop in Vermont; born in Germany; works shown in Boston, Philadelphia, Pasadena, San Francisco, and the Seattle museums.)
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), "Bible Art Show Varied in Theme," by Joan Bucklew, April 12, 1964, and a companion review, "Prints With Biblical Themes," by Campbell Geeslin. (Her intaglio "For He Repenteth Me.")
Sandpiper benefit art-auction notices, Art/Show Galleries, San Diego area, circa 1973–1974 ("Art auction scheduled Sept. 13"; "Art show to benefit San Dieguito Little Theatre"). (Brill listed among newer talents in auctions that also offered works by Chagall, Dalí, and Miró.)
Los Angeles Times, "Fire Victim Exhibit Set," July 19, 1959, and the Comara Gallery benefit notice of the same title, July 1959. (Brill lost her home and possessions in the Laurel Canyon fire; benefit exhibition to help her reassemble her materials.)
Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, "Two Local Artists Exhibit at Whittier Art Gallery," July 24, 1959.
Ventura County Star-Free Press, "Exhibit of Serigraphs Opens," April 24, 1967.
Coast Dispatch, "Brill's Serigraphs Shown at Gallery," August 15, 1974.
Mercer Island Reporter, "Art Exhibit Features Brill," July 27, 1978.
The Durham Sun, "Art Exhibit Features Brill," January 19, 1984.
Note: Many of the historical sources cited above are preserved in private collections and verified through subscription-based newspaper archives. They are referenced here to acknowledge provenance and ensure research transparency.
