I was born on March 11, 1893 in New Ulm, Minnesota. The eldest of seven children born to parents of Bohemian descent, I grew up exposed to European customs, folklore, and folk music. My parents encouraged drawing, painting, reading, and music in the household. My sister Flavia also became an author/illustrator.When I was fifteen, my father, an artist, died, leaving the family impoverished. To earn money, I began writing and illustrating stories for the Minneapolis Junior Journal, and I sold some drawings to local residents. I won an art award and later scholarships to art school in the Twin Cities. After graduating from high school, I taught in a rural Springfield, Minnesota school for a year in order to help my family financially. I then attended St. Paul Art School, 1913-1914, and Minneapolis Art School, 1914-1917. Eventually I received a scholarship to the Art Student's League, 1917-1918, in New York City. While in New York I held several jobs in commercial art, including fashion design.In 1927 I moved to Tumble Timbers near Glen Gardner, New Jersey, and began working hard to develop my ideas for children's books. In 1928 my first book, Millions of Cats, was published. It was very different from the books that children were used to and was named a Newbery Honor Book for that year. I was credited with being the first artist to utilize the double-page spread and to revive hand lettered text. (Walter Crane had hand lettered his texts forty years earlier but this practice was never followed, therefore my books seemed innovative at the time.) My brother Howard was contracted for the text, at my suggestion.Drawing and painting was put on hold for a while because of the depression. Childrens books gave me a good income during this hard time and I could not afford to give it up. I was able to purchase a country place with my companion, Earl Humphreys. There were over a hundred acres of hill and hollow and we called the place " All Creation". An illustration commissioned by the New York Herald-Tribune re-ignited my passion for folktales. I started working on a series of translations of the work of the Grimm Brothers, the first of which was published in 1936. Since I found that translating was less strenuous than writing, I continued this trend with three more books of their folktales.My sister Flavia and brother Howard came to live in the country with me and Earl. I convinced Flavia to write and illustrate children’s books. My advice resulted in many books illustrated by Flavia and also several contributions to children’s magazines.The advent of World War II cut back on large printings and reprints of my books. Earl and Howard both took jobs with the defense industry and I continued to grow vegetables in my garden to supplement the ration coupons. In 1940 Edward Alden Jewell wrote on my artwork in the New York Times:" A room will writhe and twist and lurch, its furnishings as with some terrific inner compulsion, animate.There is not a single static note. All is tenseness, quivering movement, drama—ideas externalized in an atmosphere of vehement light and dark. Interiors are haunted by a presence that, if robustly sinister, is also diabolically humorous. It is a bewitched world that Wanda Gág portrays, but the bewitchment is tough, wiry, strong minded."In 1943 I married Earle Marshall Humphrey we had been living together for years and everyone thought we were married anyway, but one of his employers found out and threatened to fire Earle. It was not long after our marriage that I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I continued to work. I reallly felt I still had something to say. I spent a winter in Florida and came home to " All Creation" in New Jersey where I died on the 27th June 1946. Following my cremation, my ashes were scattered along the path to my studio.
Striving to be clear and imaginative, I tried to make an illustration for a children's book as much a work of art as those works I would display in an art exhibition. My art was featured in individual shows at the New York Public Library (1923) and the Weyhe Gallery, New York (1926, 1930, and 1940) and in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1939) and the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1943). I was the recipient of the Newbery Honor Book Award for Millions of Cats in 1929 and for The ABC Bunny in 1934. I won the Caldecott Honor Award for Nothing At All in 1942, and for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1939. I also received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award posthumously for Millions of Cats and the Kerlan Award in 1977.
"Draw to live and live to draw!"
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