Art by Medium: Woodcut

The Radiant Prince Genji is an original artwork realized in the mid-19th Century by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865). From the series "Sono sugata ukari utsushie" (Faithful Images of t...

Portrait of the actor Kawarazaki Gonjuro and curtain is an original artwork realized in 1864 by Toyohara Kunichika (30 June 1835 – 1 July 1900) Oban. Bust portrait of the actor Kawarazaki Gonjuro in front of the brown theatre curtain with advertisement for the theatre performances. Signed: Kunichika ga. Publisher: Tsujiokaya Bunsuke. Censored by Aratame. Excellent impression with blind printing and very fine visible vertical wood grain in the brown curtain and haori, glossy black print (collar), a little bit creased. Toyohara Kunichika (30 June 1835 – 1 July 1900) was a ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock print artist. Talented as a child, at about thirteen he became a student of Tokyo's then-leading print maker, Utagawa Kunisada. His deep appreciation and knowledge of kabuki drama...

Image dimensions: 15.8 x 23.5 cm. Les sénateurs de Kellogg is a wonderful black and white xilograph on paper, realized around 1880's by the French wooden engraver Charles Laplante (...

Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) - A Toute Epreuve (D 220), Year: 1958, Medium: Woodcut on Arches, Edition: 130, Size: 12.75 x 10 in. (32.39 x 25.4 cm), Printer: Jacques Frelaut and...

Rudolf Nehmer (1912 Bobersberg - 1983 Dresden), The Fieldman and Death, around 1948. Woodcut on yellowish wove paper, 16.8 cm x 15.8 cm (depiction), 42 cm x 30 cm (sheet size), signe...

Tim Engelland (American, 1950-2012) Untitled, 1999 Woodcut 11 x 8 1/2 in. Signed, numbered, and dated topt: T. Engelland, 9/200, 1996 A lifelong artist, Engelland specialized in oil portraits and landscapes, and also worked extensively in woodcuts and linocuts. He was born on Jan. 5, 1950, in Ames, Iowa, the son of Charles Wilbur “Will” Engelland and Patricia Fairman Engelland.. Tim grew up in Terre Haute, IN, attending Fairbanks Elementary School and Indiana State University’s Laboratory School. He knew he wanted to be an artist from an early age, and was mentored by Lab School’s John Laska, graduating in 1968. He received a BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art; was a Norfolk Fellow at Yale University; and received his MFA from Cornell University, teaching there for two years after graduation. He spent the majority of his career, from 1976-2004, at Deerfield Academy, a prestigious preparatory school in Deerfield, Mass. There he taught art and photography, coached basketball and lacrosse, and served as faculty resident. When the school began accepting female students, Tim designed The Deerfield Girl, a bronze statue to accompany The Deerfield Boy statue...

Zodiac Signs - Capricorn is original Black and white xilography artwork, realized by Italian artist Piero C. Antinori. Excellent condition. Written on the lower left; Original xilo...

Signed lower right, 'Hiroyuki Tajima' (Japanese, 1911-1984) and dated 1979 with limitation and number, '100-10', lower center and titled lower left, 'Section of Landscape'. Paper dim...

To see our other Modern British Art, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message if you cannot find the artist you ...

Original editorial soft cover with dowel on front plate. Nice collection of original fine woodcuts of the Utagawa school, partially coloured, including illustrations of Japanese thea...

Eduardo Chillida, Spanish (1924 - 2002) - Egokarri (Greeting Card for 1969), Year: 1968, Medium: Woodcut on thin wove paper, signed in the plate, Edition: 300 (unnumbered), Image Si...

Tracey Emin, Billy and Traci in a Pub, 1984 Woodcut in dark blue on Japon paper, signed and inscribed 'lots love Traci xx' in pencil on the backboard, printed by the artist Test prin...

A woodblock print of a Japanese geisha in elegant clothing against a yellow decorative background. By Paul Jacoulet 15.5" x 12" Woodblock print on paper Framed Size: 22.5" x 18.5" ...

A heavy hitting and graphic woodcut by the Galician-Jewish illustrator and painter, Arthur Kolnik. The woodcut shows a poor woman, looking despairingly up at the sky as she cradles t...

Bernardo Navarro Tomas (Cuba, 1977) 'Untitled (circulos plateados)', 2021 woodcut, silkscreen on paper Guarro Biblos 250g. 27.8 x 21.5 in. (70.5 x 54.5 cm.) Edition of 20 ID: NAA-113...

Japanese woodblock print of a woman kneeling by the river. She is holding a stick making it appear like she is fishing with it. The woodblock print is printed on rice paper. The print is not framed. Artist Biography: Utagawa Kuniyasu...

Victor Hugo Nuñez (Chile, 1943) 'Los Enamorados I', 2013 woodcut on paper Guarro Biblos 250g. 29.6 x 44.1 in. (75 x 112 cm.) Edition of 33 ID: HUV-10...

Pan with Flutes - Original Bay Area Woodblock Print Bold and dynamic print of the mythological figure Pan playing double flutes by John S. Cheatham (American.) Pan stands in the cen...

NARAZAKI EISHO (1864-1936), 'Asakusa Kannon-do no naido' (Interior of the Kannon Temple at Asakusa), color woodblock print, 1932. Signed Eisho lower right, with the artist’s red seal beneath. A fine impression with fresh colors; the full sheet with slight overall age toning, a drying tack...

Sergio Hernández (Mexico, 1957) 'Lluvia Espesa', 2011 woodcut on paper Velin Arches 300 g. 46.5 x 82.7 in. (118 x 210 cm.) Edition of 10 Unframed

Adored by collectors and art lovers the world over, Alex Katz is renowned for his elegant and distinctive version of figuration. Born in 1927, Katz has been dedicated to art-making s...

Richard Bosman (b. 1944) is a painter and printmaker known for his woodcuts depicting turbulent seascapes. He studied at Bryam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing in London, The New ...

Artist: Ben Shahn, Lithuanian/American (1898 - 1969) Title: Skowhegan Year: 1965 Medium: Wood Engraving, signed in pencil Edition: 200 (unnumbered) Image Size: 9 x 8 inches Size: 16 ...

Artist: Erhard Ratdolt (German, 1442-1528) Title: "Vol. 6, page 10-11", "Vol. 6, page 6-7", and "Vol. 6, 28-29" Portfolio: Breviarium Pataviense Year: 1490 (First edition) Medium: Set of Three Original Incunabula Leaves on watermarked laid paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer: Erhard Ratdolt, Ausburg, Germany Publisher: Friedrich von Öttingen and Christoph von Schachner, Passau, Germany Reference: Hain No. 3875; Bod-Inc No. B-542; GW No. 5426; Weale/Bohatta No. 335; Schreiber No. 3615 Sheet size (each): approx. 12.5" x 8.88" Condition: "Vol. 6, page 10-11", "Vol. 6, page 6-7", and "Vol. 6, 28-29" all have scattered wormholes, staining, foxing, and soiling about their sheets. The latter two have remnants of tape at their edges. "Vol. 6, 28-29" has heavier staining to its sheet and edge wear about. Have been professionally stored away for decades. They are all otherwise strong impressions in overall fair condition with strong colors Extremely rare Notes: Comes from Ratdolt's six volume "Breviarium Pataviense", (1490) (First edition), which consists of 378 pages of Gothic texts in Latin with red rubricated initials, psalms, readings, hymns, and woodcut engraved illustrations. Printed in Augsburg by Erhard Ratdolt on May 12, 1490. There was a subsequent printing on November 27, 1490. Both "Vol. 6, page 10-11" and "Vol. 6, 28-29" have a bow and arrow watermark in the center of their sheets. Some information and old prices inscribed in pencil to their sheets. Breviary is a liturgical book in the Roman Catholic Church that contains the daily service for the divine office, the official prayer of the church consisting of psalms, readings, and hymns that are recited at stated hours of the day. Biography: Erhard Ratdolt (1442–1528) was an early German printer from Augsburg. He was active as a printer in Venice from 1476 to 1486, and afterwards in Augsburg. From 1475 to 1478 he was in partnership with two other German printers. The first book the partnership produced was the Calendarium (1476), written and previously published by Regiomontanus, which offered one of the earliest examples of a modern title page. Other noteworthy publications are the "Historia Romana of Appianus" (1477), and the first edition of "Euclid's Elements" (1482), where he solved the problem of printing geometric diagrams, the "Poeticon astronomicon", also from 1482, "Haly Abenragel" (1485), and "Alchabitius" (1503). Ratdolt is also famous for having produced the first known printer's type specimen...

Original Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper. Carol Summers has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving m...

Japanese Woodblock print of a Biensennyo-ko a powder face women. Behind the women is a framed cityscape. The print is possibly from the series "Eight Favorite Things in the Modern World". The woodblock print is printed on rice paper. The print is not framed. Artist Biography: Keisai Eisen...

Inari Kozo Tasaburo- Kabuki Color woodcut, c. 1820 Signed: ‘Toyokuni’ Publisher: ‘Yamamoto Heikichi’ Censor: Hama and Magome Very good impression and color Sheet/Image size: 15 1/2 x...

Motif (Abstract) in lavender purple. From the small edition of 10. from 1982. I am not sure if this is a woodcut or woodblock print or a silkscreen screenprint or some combination. Viola Burley Leak, American (1944 - ) Viola Leak was born in Nashville, Tennessee, she received a B.A. in Art from Fisk University, a B.F.A. in Fashion Design from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, an M.A. from Hunter College, NY and an M.F.A. in Media from Howard University, Washington, DC. Leak was an art consultant for both the New York State Board of Education and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Print Department, in addition to working for the Experimental Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institute. Her mixed media work often references religious motifs and those of her African-American experience and heritage. She is a multimedia artist, her works include printmaking, textile designing, soft sculpture, appliqué tapestries, doll making, and multi-media. Viola has studied with many renowned artists such as Aaron Douglas, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, and Charles White. Her works can be found in the collections of World Federation of United Nations, New York State Office Building, Manufacturers of Hanover Trust Company, Atlanta Life Insurance Company and many more organizations. Viola's exhibition experience is extensive - more than 100 showings over a decade, national and international. Her quilts exude a miraculous and magical presence. They have traveled in two international shows and three national quilt projects in the past three years. A proud moment for her was being featured in the December 20, 2000 of the Smithsonian magazine; the article praised her mural "Afro Dance Scan" as one of the outstanding artworks in the "When the Spirit Moves: African American Dance in History and Art" exhibit. This fine artist has taught art at several prestigious universities, conducted art workshops for the Smithsonian Institution, worked as an Art Specialist for the District of Columbia Public Schools, and toy designer for Ideal Toy Company. She has been sold in Swann Auction Galleries African-American Fine Art sales. (alongside Henry Ossawa Tanner, Dox thrash, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Kara Walker and Carrie Mae Weems amongst other greats) Select Exhibitions: Gallery Serengeti, Capitol Heights, MD – Saluting Women in the Fine Arts, featuring Gwen Aqui, Jenne Glover, Viola Leak, Tamara Little, Evelyn Holland-Walker The Charles Sumner...

"Little Wolf's Last Camp" is a colored woodblock A/P signed by Carol Summers. In the image, a mountain looms over a circle of teat the edge of a lake, a scene likely inspired by the life events of the Northern Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf (c. 1820-1904) and his leadership during the Northern Cheyenne Exodus. The drama 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. Frame: 37 x 37 in This is an artist's proof from the edition of 100 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 nonwestern 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...

Jacob Otto Pins (17 January 1917 – 4 December 2005) was a German-born Israeli woodcut artist and art collector, particularly of Japanese prints and paintings. Jacob Pins was born in Höxter, Germany, the son of Dr Leo Pins, a veterinarian, and his wife Ida Lipper. He immigrated to Palestine in 1936 to study art. His father tried to discourage him from becoming an artist for financial reasons. Pins' younger brother, Rudolph, (1920-2016) moved to the United States in 1934. His father was sent to Buchenwald. In July 1944, both parents died in the Riga ghetto. Pins first lived on a kibbutz, which was disbanded in 1941. He moved to Jerusalem and studied woodcut and linocut under woodcut master and painter Jacob Steinhardt, also a German immigrant, at his small private school. He lived in poverty in a tiny room, subsisting on a meagre diet. He continued his studies at the new Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Pins was married to Elsa, the subject of a number of his prints. They had no children. Pins bought his first Oriental print in 1945, and acquired a house on Ethiopia Street, opposite the Ethiopian church, where he lived for the rest of his life. He continued collecting until his death and was one of Israel's foremost art collectors. His book on Japanese Pillar Prints, Hashira-e is the definitive work on the subject. Pins died in Jerusalem in December 2005. Pins' artwork was heavily influenced by German expressionism and traditional Japanese wood block printing. From 1956 to 1977, he taught at Israel's leading art schools, most notably Bezalel, where he later became a professor. He was known as a demanding teacher, emphasizing strong technical skills and discipline. In the 1950s, Pins helped to found the Jerusalem Artists' House, a centre for the city's artists to meet and exhibit. Legacy Pins' extensive collection of Japanese woodprints...

Title: Sho'onko Ryoho 小溫侯呂方 (Lu Fang) form Series: Tsuzoku Suikoden goketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori 通俗水滸傳濠傑百八人一個 (One of the 108 Heroes of the Popular Water Margin) Utagawa...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - The Purgatory, Canto 5 - Virgil's Reproaches Original woodcut from 1960. Dimensions of work: 33 x 26.2 cm Publisher: Les Heures Claires, Paris. Refere...

The present work is an excellent example of the erotic Shunga prints produced by Utagawa 'Ando' Hioshige and his school. Shunga imagery became especially widespread in Japan with the...

A charming Japanese woodblock print depicting three geishas playing instruments in a Kawacho restaurant. From Kaika sanjuroku kaiseki (Thirty-six famous restaurants and views of civi...

A major figure of the contemporary street art movement, Shepard Fairey rose to prominence in the early 1990s with his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” cam...

Luis Camnitzer and Martin Buber (1878-1965), New York: JMB Publishers Ltd, 1970. Printed at The New York Graphic Workshop. Hand signed on Arches paper. (Edition 24/100, numbered on Justification page) Woodblock prints based on folktales from the Hasidic Jewish tradition in Eastern Europe, selected by Camnitzer from the early masters section of Buber’s Die chassidischen Bücher as translated by Olga Marx. German Expressionist style Jewish woodcuts...

Arashi Rikan II in an Osaka Kabuki Scene Color woodcut, c. 1827 Signed middle left (see photo) Titled upper left (see photo) Format: oban Publisher: Honsei The actor, in character, d...

Exceptional, brilliant impression and colors from the extremely rare 1st edition Kataoka Nizayemon(?) Color woodcut, 1860 From the series: "Contemporary Brocade Mirror Portraits" Pub...

Koitsu, Tsuchiya (Japanese, 1870-1949). BENKEI BRIDGE. Color Woodblock, 1933. Printed signature and other information in the margins left and right. Vertical Oban. 14 1/4 x 9 1/2 inc...

A vibrant Japanese woodblock print by the prolific and prominent ukiyo-e artist Kunisada Utagawa (1786-1865) depicting two ladies in richly patterned traditional dress amongst blosso...

from a portfolio of Biblical woodcut prints. these are pencil signed, titled and numbered 4/5. This one is 'Abraham Teaching Isaac to Sacrafice'. woodblock prints on a thin tissue li...

"Yanagibashi in Snow" is an original color woodcut by Utagawa Kunisada. This woodblock print depicts a woman walking in the snow near the Motoyanagi canal, which was located in Tokyo...

Frasconi, Antonio. SNAPSHOT. Cleveland 165. Woodcut in colors, 1950. Edition of 10. Titled, inscribed "Ed 4/10" and signed and dated in pencil. 22 1/4 x 14 15/16 inches in an oval fo...

The present work is an excellent example of the erotic Shunga prints produced by Utagawa 'Ando' Hioshige and his school. Shunga imagery became especially widespread in Japan with the...

"Diocletian's Retreat" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. The image combines landscape and architecture, in this case a classical struc...

"India" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. Here, Summer's abstract language for landscape imagery is taken to its most extreme: The image offers a view of a highly stylized waterfall, with red water falling down behind green foliage below. A hint of light blue at the lower left suggests a continuation of the water's flow. Above, purples and yellows mist upward from the power of the water. 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. Summers' signature can be found in pencil at the bottom of the rightmost blue form, with the title and edition at the bottom of the leftmost blue form. A copy of this print can be found in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 37.25 x 24.88 inches, artwork 48.5 x 35.5 inches, frame Numbered 44 from the edition of 75 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 nonwestern 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...

Alex Katz (b. 1927) Coleman Pond III (Bauer 446) Heliorelief woodcut on tosa washi hanga natural paper Signed and numbered “Pres 1/6” in the lower margin. Printed by Tom Pruitt, G...

Penelope Ellis (1935-2016) Horse by the Barn Woodblock print 11 x 16 cm Provenance: From the artist's estate sale. ​Penelope Mary Ellis (1935–2016) was a British artist celebrate...

Three Beauties under a maple tree from the series "A Contest of Fashionable Beauties of the Gay Quarters". The woodblock print is printed on rice paper....

This is a Colour Woodcut by Japanese artists Kitagawa Utamaro, published c. 1792–93. A Modern reprint first between 1918 and 1923, this is a later print in the 90s from Japan. This p...

The Dutiful Youth of Mino Province Collecting Wood to Warm His Old Father Color woodcut, c. 1842-43 Signed and sealed lower right (see photo) From the Series: "Honcho nijushi-ko" (Tw...

Reclining Nude, from Expressionist Woodcut Series (C. 172). Woodcut in colors with embossing, 1980, on Arches Cover. Hand signed, numbered and dated in ...

Woodcut print realized by Escher for the series "Emblemata", and published in 1931. On Hollande van Gelder paper. Edition of 300. Unsigned, as issued. Excellent condition, matted....

Répit (Respite) is a woodcut on paper from Marc Chagall's Poèmes portfolio, published in 1968. The image size is 13 x 10 inches and the art is framed in an ornate, gold-tone frame. U...

A very good impression of this color woodcut and lithograph diptych. Signed and dated in pencil by Dine. From a limited edition of 12.

Artist: Charlie Hewitt, American (1946 - ) Title: Untitled Year: circa 1995 Medium: Woodblock, Signed and Numbered in Pencil Edition: 100 Image Size: 16 x 20 inches Size: 20 in. x 24...

Artist: Charlie Hewitt, American (1946 - ) Title: Untitled - III Year: circa 1995 Medium: Woodblock Monoprint, Signed in Pencil Edition: 1/1 Size: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 60.96 cm)

A classical chiaroscuro woodcut after Raphael executed by Charles Nicolas Cochin Père (1688-1754) & Vincent Le Sueur (1668-1743) . Printed from two bloc...

Hans Ticha, born in 1940 in what was then Czechoslovakia, is a renowned German artist, particularly celebrated for his exceptional contributions to contemporary art. He gained promin...

Artist: Gaston Petit, Canadian (1933 - ) Title: Millepertuis Corail Year: 1971 Medium: Woodcut, signed, numbered, and titled in pencil Edition: 3/37 Ima...