Volume 25, Issue 1 (1995) Winter

About the Cover Image

"Hadrian and Antinous," on our cover, is a soft ground etching with engraving. This is the first state of the etching, 13 1/2 by 19 inches, and lent to us by permission of Leola Bergmann, the artist. Ms. Bergmann's lifelong interest in the arts led her through a B.A. in English from St. Olaf College, 1937, and an M.A. (1939) and Ph.D. in American Civilization from The University of Iowa in 1942. Her dissertation was a biography of F. Melius Christiansen, founder and director of the renowned St. Olaf Choir. This was followed by Music Master of Middle West, University of Minnesota Press, 1944; The Negro in Iowa, Iowa State Historical Society, 1948; Americans from Norway, J.B. Lippincott, 1950; and numerous articles and reviews. Her interest in music and the visual arts led her to pursue instruction in the violin, painting and drawing, and eventually in printmaking at The University of Iowa. From 1964 to 1969, she studied with Mauricio Lasansky, Keith Achepohl, and Virginia Myers. Then she established a studio in her Iowa City home and continues, she says, "to experiment with the endless possibilities and challenges of the rich medium of intaglio and monotype printing." Her prints are in numerous private and public collections in this country and abroad. A retrospective of three decades of printmaking was shown in an Iowa City gallery in October, 1994. A collage portrait of her close friend, the novelist Marguerite Young, was among the prints featured in the exhibit and will appear on our next issue. Her husband, Gustav Bergmann, was professor of philosophy at The University of Iowa.