What the Critics Say:

Benjamin Forgey, "The Washington Star," ... the hallmark of her art, from 1949 to present, is an extreme clarity of idea and style. Asher has the consummate illustrator's gift for seizing the proper moment, gesture and form with which to depict a particular theme or idea. Her medium in print has been the linoleum cut, which perfectly suits her consistent use of clear-cut forms in strong blacks and whites, and her incisive, graceful, stylized way of drawing. Her themes over the years have been amazingly consistent, mother-and-child, couples, figures symbolizing timeless human situations, music, biblical stories. The pleasure in the show is to see the gradually increasing mastery with which she approaches her chosen visual vocabulary; a modest triumph, but a real one.. . . .Asher's work over the years is all of a piece, a consistent sensitivity, ability and style applied to accepted universal themes... Her figures from the earliest to the latest are defined by rhythmical contour, and there's scarcely a mistake in the show. In the later prints, an adult and child dancing Ring-around-a-Rosey or a female nude reclining on a bed, an unassuming virtuosity can be felt; the foreshortening is dramatic and correct, and yet none of the feel of classical repose is lost.


Paul Richard, "The Washington Post," Lila Oliver Asher's prints are the finest when most simple, strongest when gentle, "Prints from Life" is the title of her retrospective at Howard University, where she began to teach art 30 years ago. Asher, like Matisse, is able to suggest the weight and warmth of flesh without recourse to shading, with a single line. Her nudes, embracing lovers, and mothers stroking babies are affective because finely drawn and wholly unpretentious ... Something peaceful, quiet, a mood of graceful kindness rises from this show.