Art by Medium: Monotype

"Taos II" is a striking earth-toned abstract monotype by acclaimed artist Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). The artwork features a harmonious blend of blue, brown, and black hues, creating a ...

Color monotype with collaged antique paper and gold leaf. Robert Kushner is a painter and a sculptor. He gained attention in the early seventies as a ...

The present artwork is a vibrant and colorful example of the woodcut prints of Carol Summers. The image is dominated by the form of a red tropical flower, closely cropped around the petals like in the photographs of Imogen Cunningham and the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form. 9.63 x 11.63 inches, artwork 21 x 23 inches, frame Edition 16/50 in pencil, lower right Titled in pencil, lower right Signed in pencil, lower center Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting, Museum Glass to inhibit fading, and housed in a modern profile gold gilded wood moulding. Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision which would have significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind and Arch of Triumph, a new look prevailed. These woodcuts were larger in size and in color. Some incorporated metal leaf in the creation of a collage and Summers even experimented with silkscreening. Editions were now between 20 and 50 prints in number. Most importantly, Summers employed his rubbing technique for the first time in the creation of Fantastic Garden in late 1957. Dark Vision of Xerxes, a benchmark for Summers, was the first woodcut where Summers experimented using mineral spirits as part of his printmaking process. A Fulbright Grant as well as Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation followed soon thereafter, as did faculty positions at colleges and universities primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During this period he married a dancer named Elaine Smithers with whom he had one son, Kyle. Around this same time, along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers pioneered what is now referred to as the “monumental” woodcut. This term was coined in the early 1960s to denote woodcuts that were dramatically bigger than those previously created in earlier years, ones that were limited in size mostly by the size of small hand-presses. While Baskin chose figurative subject matter, serious in nature and rendered with thick, striated lines, Summers rendered much less somber images preferring to emphasize shape and color; his subject matter approached abstraction but was always firmly rooted in the landscape. In addition to working in this new, larger scale, Summers simultaneously refined a printmaking process which would eventually be called the “Carol Summers Method” or the “ Carol Summers Technique”. Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. His woodcuts reveal a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several of his woodcuts throughout his career he has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. The best examples of this are Dream, done in 1965 and the later Flash Flood Escalante, in 2003. In the majority of his woodcuts, Summers makes the blocks slightly larger than the paper so the image and color will bleed off the edge. Before printing, he centers a dry sheet of paper over the top of the cut wood block or blocks, securing it with giant clips. Then he rolls the ink directly on the front of the sheet of paper and pressing down onto the dry wood block or reassembled group of blocks. Summers is technically very proficient; the inks are thoroughly saturated onto the surface of the paper but they do not run into each other. The precision of the color inking in Constantine’s Dream in 1969 and Rainbow Glacier in 1970 has been referred to in various studio handbooks. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly onto the block. However, by following his own method, Summers has avoided the mirror-reversed image of a conventional print and it has given him the control over the precise amount of ink that he wants on the paper. After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which act as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface softening the shapes and diffusing and muting the colors. This produces a unique glow that is a hallmark of the Summers printmaking technique. Unlike the works of other color field artists or modernists of the time, this new technique made Summers’ extreme simplification and flat color areas anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal. By the 1960s, Summers had developed a personal way of coloring and printing and was not afraid of hard work, doing the cutting, inking and pulling himself. In 1964, at the age of 38, Summers’ work was exhibited for a second time at the Museum of Modern Art. This time his work was featured in a one-man show and then as one of MoMA’s two-year traveling exhibitions which toured throughout the United States. In subsequent years, Summers’ works would be exhibited and acquired for the permanent collections of multiple museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Summers’ familiarity with landscapes throughout the world is firsthand. As a navigator-bombardier in the Marines in World War II, he toured the South Pacific and Asia. Following college, travel in Europe and subsequent teaching positions, in 1972, after 47 years on the East Coast, Carol Summers moved permanently to Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. There met his second wife, Joan Ward Toth, a textile artist who died in 1998; and it was here his second son, Ethan was born. During the years that followed this relocation, Summers’ choice of subject matter became more diverse although it retained the positive, mostly life-affirming quality that had existed from the beginning. Images now included moons, comets, both sunny and starry skies, hearts and flowers, all of which, in one way or another, remained tied to the landscape. In the 1980s, from his home and studio in the Santa Cruz mountains, Summers continued to work as an artist supplementing his income by conducting classes and workshops at universities in California and Oregon as well as throughout the Mid and Southwest. He also traveled extensively during this period hiking and camping, often for weeks at a time, throughout the western United States and Canada. Throughout the decade it was not unusual for Summers to backpack alone or with a fellow artist into mountains or back country for six weeks or more at a time. Not surprisingly, the artwork created during this period rarely departed from images of the land, sea and sky. Summers rendered these landscapes in a more representational style than before, however he always kept them somewhat abstract by mixing geometric shapes with organic shapes, irregular in outline. Some of his most critically acknowledged work was created during this period including First Rain, 1985 and The Rolling Sea, 1989. Summers received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Bard College in 1979 and was selected by the United States Information Agency to spend a year conducting painting and printmaking workshops at universities throughout India. Since that original sabbatical, he has returned every year, spending four to eight weeks traveling throughout that country. In the 1990s, interspersed with these journeys to India have been additional treks to the back roads and high country areas of Mexico, Central America, Nepal, China and Japan. Travel to these exotic and faraway places had a profound influence on Summers’ art. Subject matter became more worldly and non-western as with From Humla to Dolpo, 1991 or A Former Life of Budha, 1996, for example. Architectural images, such as The Pillars of Hercules, 1990 or The Raja’s Aviary, 1992 became more common. Still life images made a reappearance with Jungle Bouquet in 1997. This was also a period when Summers began using odd-sized paper to further the impact of an image. The 1996 Night, a view of the earth and horizon as it might be seen by an astronaut, is over six feet long and only slightly more than a foot-and-a-half high. From 1999, Revuelta A Vida (Spanish for “Return to Life”) is pie-shaped and covers nearly 18 cubic feet. It was also at this juncture that Summers began to experiment with a somewhat different palette although he retained his love of saturated colors. The 2003 Far Side of Time is a superb example of the new direction taken by this colorist. At the turn of the millennium in 1999, “Carol Summers Woodcuts...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Nude figurative by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). Initialed "PP" on verso with the artist's name. Presented in a new blue mat with foamcore backing. Image size: 13"H x 11.25...

This beautiful monotype by Kirsten Stolle (1967-) is a simple, yet elegant composition with beautiful, harmonious colors. There is a wonderful warmth and richness to the surface; var...

"As A Butterfly" is a lithographic monotype on Rives BFK paper featuring hues ofpurple, orange, blue and yellow. This work is framed in a gold frame measuring 25.5 by 22 inches. Claire Whitehurst is inspired by the works of Ruth Asawa, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Pelton, Hilma af Klimt, Alma Thomas...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1950. A sensitively colored and modeled monotype by this Paris-trained, California Post-...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1955. A Post-Impressionist figural monotype showing a woman standing beneath a tree in t...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1955. Winner of the Prix Othon Friesz, Victor di Gesu first attended the Los Angeles Art...

"Arroyo" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. The print is a break from the usual bright coloring of Summers' images, though is rendered in his typical style and fields of unmodeled color. A pair of trees stand front and center before an arroyo, a Spanish term for an intermittently dry creek, running out to the ocean. A white sunrise glows in the distance beyond the sea. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form. 14.25 x 14 inches, artwork Numbered from the edition of 120 This print was commissioned by the Madison Print Club, Madison, WI Carol Summers (1925-2016) worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for its large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world, and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction, and Icarus) was shown for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content, and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision that would have a significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain, and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind, and Arch of Triumph...

This artwork "Untitled #2" 1992 is a original monotype on paper by Swiss artist Barbara Diethelm, born 1962. It is hand signed and dated in pencil by the artist. Printed and published by Aurobora Press, San Francisco. The artwork (image) size is 7 x 6.5 inches, sheet size is 13.5 x 13.5 inches. It is in excellent condition. About the artist. Barbara Diethelm was born and raised in Zürich. After attending college in Zürich she moves to the United States in 1982. 1983 – 1988 Studies Graphic Design and Fine Art (with Mel Casas, Mark Pritchett und Tom Willome) at S.A.C. in San Antonio, Texas. Studies Humanities and Management at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio. 1988 – 1990 studies Painting (with Sam Tchakalian...

Artist: Richard Attilio Moquin (American, born 1934) Title: Untitled #I Year: 1992 Medium: Monotype Paper: B.F.K Rives Image size: 13.75 x 9.75 inches paper size: 20.5 x...

"Cabin I" is a Bauhaus-inspired monotype and collage (work on paper) reminiscent of the aesthetic of Le Corbusier. It is part of Bouton’s "Habitat and Urban Matter" series, which is inspired by the straight lines of modernist architecture and hard-edged geometrical forms of the urban environment. Bouton, a French printmaker from Paris who has also lived in London, Myanmar, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Turkey, creates work that responds to her experiences during her travels and the cultures she encountered. Since settling in the Philadelphia area, she has been inspired by the urbanism of the city, whether a sleek, new apartment block, an abandoned warehouse, or a half-demolished home. Her latest works are interpretations of these buildings, with both broad street views and focused details from single structures –- the pattern of the skyline, a patchwork of broken windows, an industrial color palette. She is drawn to the history of the spaces and lives lived within these buildings, as well as their intrinsic beauty of the structures, whether that beauty emerges from design or degradation, or some combination of the two. Signed and dated. Bouton is a French artist living and working in the Philadelphia area whose boundary-pushing printmaking and paper works exhibit influence from living and working in international cities across the globe. Bouton earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking and her MFA in Arts and Textile Design from the prestigious ESSAA Duperré in Paris, France. Since leaving Paris 15 years ago, Bouton has lived and exhibited her work internationally in Paris (France), London (UK), Philadelphia (USA), Rangoon (Burma/Myanmar), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Dakar (Senegal) and Istanbul (Turkey). She has presented solo exhibitions at the Biennale de l’Art Africain...

13x22" image size monotype, unframed. Shrink-wrapped on poster board, paper size total 22x30". I document the essence of the landscape everyday. I am interested in those untouched v...

13x22" image size monotype, unframed. Shrink-wrapped on poster board, paper size total 22x30". I document the essence of the landscape everyday. I am interested in those untouched v...

I primarily paint on location, en plein air. Direct observation allows me to translate the light and color of a particular location as I try to capture a specific point in time. The ...

Color monotype. Barbara Takenaga's latest prints are a series of Untitled hand colored monotypes, which she describes as follows: Making these monotypes was a wonderful new experience for me. They combine a painterly, abstract background with a graphic structure of hard edged, flat forms. Those dark shapes can be read as either positive/foreground space (body silhouettes or curtains) or as negative space that frames a central image (landscapes, columns, creatures). Similarly, the white lines and dots...

Untitled 21-16 by Casey Haugh, Represented by Tuleste Factory "I produce these monotypes layer by layer and often color by color. Each one is made with four or five separate layers ...

Kushner completed a series of monotypes, many with collaged decorative papers. He worked from still-lives of flowers, fruits, pitchers and Betty Woodman ceramic vessels. These prints...

An abstract mixed media piece using raw walnut monotype, akua on Fabriano Rosaspina 220 gsm paper.

A raw walnut monotype using akua on Fabriano Rosaspina 220 gsm paper.

A raw walnut monotype using akua on Fabriano Rosaspina 220 gsm paper.

A raw walnut monotype using akua on Frabriano Rosaspina 220 gsm paper.

Artist Commentary: This work is part of a portfolio of art inspired by my summer trip to a totem pole nature center in Alaska in 2013. Rich Colors, ...

Signed, titled, and number MS 1 (Mono screenprint 1/1). This is one of a small group of prints done during a session working with Gronk at Self Help G...

Alain Kirili (French/American, 1946-2021), Post-Minimalist Composition, Mixed Media on Paper, with collage elements, signed to reverse, wood frame. Image: 29.5" H x 41" W; frame; 32"...

"Reliq" is an original black and white monotype by Beckett Berning. The artist signed the piece. It depicts a face above a gravestone. 9 1/4" x 6 3/4" art 18" x 15 3/4" frame Beck...

Color monotype with collage. Kushner recently completed a series of monotypes, many with collaged decorative papers. He worked from still-lives of flowers, fruits, pitchers and Bett...

Nancy Lasar’s work is described as “drawing with light”, “condensed energy and flow”, “calm and crazy”, and “organized chaos”. The lines in Lasar’s works that are electrifying. They ...

Nancy Lasar’s work is described as “drawing with light”, “condensed energy and flow”, “calm and crazy”, and “organized chaos”. The lines in Lasar’s works that are electrifying. They ...

Painted by Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) circa 1955 and stamped, verso, with Victor di Gesu estate stamp. A bold, expressionist monotype showing two young women seated side b...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1955. Provenance: Janet Ament De La Roche, from estate stamp verso. A cabinet sized, Pos...

Nancy Lasar’s work is described as “drawing with light”, “condensed energy and flow”, “calm and crazy”, and “organized chaos”. The lines in Lasar’s works that are electrifying. They ...

Sean Flood, American (b. 1982), Midtown View, circa 2016 Titled in pencil lower center margin: "Midtown View"; signed and dated in pencil lower right margin: "Sean Flood 2016". A fi...

Monotype 47 x 34 inches framed

Artist Commentary: This work is part of a portfolio of art inspired by my trip to Alaska in 2013. About the artist: Monice Morenz was introduced to...

Monotype 44 x 30.5 inches unframed 47 x 34 inches framed

Color monotype Completed after a recent trip to Morocco, this print continues Grooms’ series of tributes to modern masters. Grooms imagined this scene as he followed the footsteps...

Clinton Storm was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and received his bachelor of fine arts from the University of Michigan. He has shown in numerous solo an...

Color monotype. The ‘okina is the Hawaiian representation of the glottal stop. It is a separation of doubles. The monotypes in the ‘Okina series are doubles; the prints are divided...

Certification of Authenticity stamped verso; additionally accompanied by old exhibition label. Provenance: 28th Annual Exhibition of Art, San Francisco Women Artists, San Francisco...

In Sanskrit, zero was sunya, emptiness, with its implication of a qualityless layer that exists behind all appearances. Its root, vi, to swell, connotes that is a receptive womb, a p...

I will meet you there, back in the eternal cosmic waters. Angelica’s multi-layered works are informed by her ongoing efforts to create a less reactive and more responsive presence i...

Artist Commentary: Together Apart It’s a CoronaVirus pandemic reality of the world! We are all in this together but to be safe we must be ...

About the artist: Oi Fortin is an award-winning monotype printmaker, working in New Haven, CT, USA. Her contemporary abstract expressionist prints are notable for a vivid palette and...

Artist Commentary: The work in the Alaskan Portfolio was inspired by a summer trip to Denali in 2013. About the artist: Monice Morenz was introduced t...

Empty Nest, Original Abstract Monoprint in Neutral Colors, 2022 30" x 22" (HxW) Print on Paper This unique oil print on paper by artist Oi Fortin features a...

About the artist: Oi Fortin is an award-winning monotype printmaker, working in New Haven, CT, USA. Her contemporary abstract expressionist prints are notable for a vivid palette and...

Artist Commentary: This image called, "Flower Scape," is one of my favorite images. It is perfectly seasoned with spring coming right around the corner. The colors are very well exe...

Winter Dawn, 2020 18" x 24" (HxW) Original Abstract Monoprint A unique print by artist Oi Fortin. A field of undulating blue is speckled with brown dots and...

Color monotype based on the edition print of "Travels of Fortune": The artist describes this work as follows: “I wanted to focus on the positive cultural heritage these refugees bri...

"She is the dark night and the black soil that holds within itself the intense power of light, the secrets and the forces of all life. She is the mouth, the vagina, the passionate an...