Germaine de COSTER

Germaine de Coster (1895-1993) lived a long life, which was regulated by a decades-long teaching position in a school for decorative arts.  She received a formal artistic education, before learning printmaking, particularly color woodcut techniques, from Jules Chadel and Yoshyiro Urushibara.  She was committed to printmaking, creating color woodcuts and pure-line engravings mostly.  For the former she tended towards the realistic, while she was creating cubist compositions, which tended towards the abstract, for the latter.  This cubism was likely influenced by her trade as a book binding designer.  Today, she is mostly remembered for this craft, and books bound in designs by Germaine de Coster are highly collectible in France.