Monotype Landscape Prints

A bright golden sunset illuminates the sky and landscape in this signed and numbered monotype by John Beerman. In the foreground, two stones sit on a cliff t...

This woodcut print on paper evokes the peacefulness of looking across a stream towards a thicket of trees in a forest in shades of violet, from lilac to dark eggplant purple. The mon...

This woodcut print on paper evokes the peacefulness of looking across a stream towards a thicket of trees in a forest in shades of light yellow, very pale sky gray blue and soft lave...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. Exquisite landscape of a "Mystic Louisiana Marsh". Details: + Title: Mystic Louisiana Marsh + Year: 2025 + Edition Size:...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype of a Sandy Shore with Foam. Details: + Title: Sandy Shore with Foam + Edition Size: 100 + Stamped and Certificate of Aut...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. This beautiful cyanotype is titled "Long Wave in Venice Beach" and it shows an outstanding wave in one of the most iconic ...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Rolling Waves off Sidney" is a gorgeous original cyanotype diptych showing energetic waves embracing the Australian coas...

This series of cyanotype triptychs showcases the beauty of nature scenes, including stunning beaches and oceans, as well as the intricate textures of w...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. Lovely scene of a hidden pond in a Scandinavian forest. Details: + Title: Scandinavian Enchanted Forest + Year: 2024 + ...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...

KARL YENS (1868 – 1945) (FLOWERS) 1919 Color monotype signed, dated and annotated: “monotype 1919.” 17 ½” x 11 ½” Monotypes are unique works of art that fall between printmaking a...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Misty Sailboat Journey" is a handmade cyanotype print portraying a daytime sailboat journey...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. Stunning image of a breezy "Malibu Pine Sea View". Details: + Title: Malibu Pine Sea View + Year: 2025 + Edition Size: 50...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Abstract Ripples Under Moonlight" is a handmade cyanotype print portraying the subtle movements and abstract ripples of t...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...

This series of cyanotype triptychs showcases the beauty of nature scenes, including stunning beaches and oceans, as well as the intricate textures of water, forests, and skies. These...

This series of cyanotype triptychs showcases the beauty of nature scenes, including stunning beaches and oceans, as well as the intricate textures of water, forests, and skies. These...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-light. Details: + Title: Asian Totem...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-...

This large, horizontal diptych of two woodcut prints on paper evokes the peacefulness of ocean waves depicted in shades of blue, bright royal blue offset by soft, pale blue tones. Th...

Monotype ev edition 3/4 with heavy hand coloring. The plate is 28 x 28 inches and the overall paper size is 33 1/2 x 32 inches. Signed, titled and dated. Kim Frohsin spend 12 years w...

This series of cyanotype triptychs showcases the beauty of nature scenes, including stunning beaches and oceans, as well as the intricate textures of water, forests, and skies. These...

"Paricutin (Volcano in Michoacan, Mexico)" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. In the image, an abstracted volcano erupts in a joyous burst of purples and oranges. 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. Art: 8 x 11 in Frame: 17 x 19 in 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...

Unique monotype, signed and numbered 1/1. Artist Robert Roach worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His one-of-a-kind, abstract monoprints are inspired by the landscape, climate and light...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. This diptych is titled "Japanese Zen Pond Ripples", and shows ripples of water from a calming pond. Details: + Title: Ja...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Sparkling Firework Burst" is a beautiful cyanotype of the New Years Eve Fireworks Lights. Details: + Title: Sparkling Fi...

This woodcut print on paper evokes the peacefulness of looking across a stream towards a thicket of trees in a forest in shades of light grass green, yellow, sky blue and dark violet...

Bradford, Katherine (American, born 1942) STEAMBOAT SUITE PORTFOLIO WITH AN EXTRA MONOTYPE ADDED, 2013. Edition of 10, plus 7 Artist's Proofs and Collaborators copies. Of the editio...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Fireworks Lights" is a minimal cyanotype diptych that shows path of the fireworks over the sky. Details: + Title: Firew...

This series of cyanotype triptychs showcases the beauty of nature scenes, including stunning beaches and oceans, as well as the intricate textures of water, forests, and skies. These triptychs are large pieces that feature lush blues, making them an impressive addition to any beautifully designed space. Each triptych is printed by hand and carefully crafted to capture the unique essence of these natural environments, with a focus on the interplay of light and shadows, and the subtle nuances of tone and texture. The beach and ocean scenes depict the dynamic beauty of waves crashing against the shore, with the cyanotype process lending a dreamy, ethereal quality to the images. Similarly, the forest and wood scenes...

Abstracted, figurative monotype of six figures in a landscape 12 x 24 inch image on 22 x 33 inch Rives BFK paper Rives BFK paper is made of cotton, has deckled edges and is acid-fre...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Glowing Fireworks Lights" is a beautiful cyanotype of the New Years Eve Fireworks Lights. Details: + Title: Glowing Fire...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Nighttime Firework Flaring" is a beautiful cyanotype of the New Years Eve Fireworks Lights. Details: + Title: Nighttime ...

"Leaf Ocean" is a dramatic cyanotype and woodcut monoprint with contrasting layers and objects abstracted from nature. Black, silver, and white leaves float on top of a watery background. In her creative process, Katherine scans organic material which she then refines into digital files. The images are then then cut out of wood using a laser cutter. Katherine prints the inked wood shapes in combination with ink washes, in different arrangements making each print unique. For more works by Katherine Warriner and new listings, follow our storefront at Colibri Gallery...

Abstract landscape monotype of a large cumulus cloud in soft pink and periwinkle blue 12 x 12 inch image on 22 x 33 inch Rives BFK paper Rives BFK paper is made of cotton, has deckle...

An original mid century modern abstract expressionist monotype print by American artist Toma Yovanovich. Toma Yovanovich (1931-2016) Yovanovich was a painter/printmaker whos...

Black and white cityscape or landscape with swimmers bathing with friends in a large pool or body of water. This monotype -- a unique painting in ink -- presents an atmospheric scene of European leisure and sports. Paper 35 x 26 in. / 90 x 66 cm. Monotype on white MBM Ingres d'Arches paper. Signed by the artist, annotated "IA", and dated 1990 lower right in pencil. This large monotype depicts a group of young men swimming...

The artwork will be sent unframed Linocut and Monotype print „Loneliness 4 ” 2022 Limited edition, print unique number 6/6 Paper Fabriano Rosaspina 220 g Paper size 19,69x15,75 inch...

A bright golden sunset illuminates the sky and landscape in this signed and numbered monotype by John Beerman. In the foreground, two stones sit on a cliff t...

Abstract landscape print of a country farm in earth tones of beige, orange, and brown 12 x 24 inch image on 22 x 30 inch Rives BFK paper, unframed Rives BFK paper is made of cotton,...

Dramatic, large scale black, white, green and grey Western American landscape with river, grassy banks, trees, and rolling clouds filling the sky. Hang in minimalist, modern, and con...

Sybil Andrews, 'Le Petit Bay, St. Malo', color monotype, c. 1925; edition 3, print 2. Signed 'Sybil Andrews pinx et imp' annotated 'No 2' and titled in pencil. A superb, luminous imp...

Monotype painting of American landscape with sky and sweeping clouds, printed in muted colors and black and white. A large train cuts a path atop a ridge. Michele Zalopany's masterfu...

Monotype Monoprint Hand signed and numbered 1/1 Lake landscape Sheet: 37.5" X 27" Image: 29.5" X 19.75" Susan Hall lives and works in Point Reyes Station, California, a town in the heart of the Point Reyes National Seashore. This pristine wilderness area is dominated by a mosaic of bays and ocean, rolling grass lands and forests. It is inhabited by a diversity of wildlife, including over 450 species of birds, mountains lions, deer, bobcats, foxes, and elk. Ms. Hall who is a native of this area returned after spending twenty years in New York City. In her book, “Painting Point Reyes”, Hall says, “Point Reyes is the center of my painting life. Point Reyes has been my life and when I haven’t lived here, it has been an underground stream that spoke to me in dreams and visions.” While living and painting in New York City, Ms. Hall exhibited her work widely in museums and galleries. Among them are the Whitney Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Trabia MacAfee Gallery, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago; Ovsey Gallery, Los Angeles. In addition, her work has been featured in group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including in 2020 Bud Shark's Ink: The California Crew at BMoCA, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Colorado USA representing the panoply of aesthetics, cultural backgrounds, viewpoints, and talent held within the bounty of art “made in California.” This remarkable grouping of artists, Brad Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Roy De Forest, Amy Ellingson, Susan Hall, Don Ed Hardy, Mildred Howard, Robert Hudson, Hung Liu, Kara Maria, Rex Ray, Alison Saar, Italo Scanga, and William T. Wiley. Women to the Fore, Hudson River Museum Yonkers 2021 A group of women artists working in oil painting and drawing, lithograph prints and photograph, collage and sculpture. Many icons of feminist art history. Judy Chicago, Judy Giera, Marisol, and Shanequa Benitez, Ann McCoy, Anna Walinska, Audrey Flack, Barbara Morgan, Berenice Abbott, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Hannelore Baron, Harriet, Judy Chicago, Louise Nevelson, Marisol, Mary Frank, Nancy Graves, Susan Hall, Yvonne Thomas...

Abstract print of an aerial view of a baseball park with a distant landscape 24 x 12 inch image on 30 x 22 inch Rives BFK paper, unframed Rives BFK paper is made of cotton, has dec...

Artist: Red Grooms (1937) Title: Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe Year: circa 1987 Medium: Monotype and mixed media on wove paper Size: 47.62 x 31.87 inches Condition: Excellent I...

This large scale landscape monotype in black and brown features a scene from London’s Greenwich Park, a former hunting park established in the 15...

Gregory Amenoff (Contemporary American abstract painter, b. 1948), Monotype Monoprint (1990) Hand signed in pencil lower right plate: 16 x 16 inches frame dimensions: 35 1/8 x 29 1/8 x 1 5/8 inches, wood frame with glazing Provenance: Corporate Collection of Bank BNP Paribas Gregory Amenoff is a painter who lives in New York City and Ulster County, New York. He is the recipient of numerous awards from organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and the Tiffany Foundation. He has had over fifty one-person painting exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. His work is in the permanent collections of more than thirty museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work has the influence of both Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art in it, biomorphic forms in rich hues and thick textures with heightened colors and abstracted, organic forms, late American Modernism. He moved to New York in 1979, the artist rose to critical acclaim in the 1980s alongside Terry Winters, Bill Jensen, and Katherine Porter. The artist lives and works between New York, NY and his Hudson Valley residence. He works in woodcut, lithograph and monoprint techniques. He was a collaborating artist illustrating Bradford Morrow, Bestiary along with Joe Andoe, James Brown, Vija Celmins, Louisa Chase, Eric Fischl, Jan Hashey, Michael Hurson, Mel Kendrick, James Nares, Ellen Phelan, Joel Shapiro, Kiki Smith, David Storey, Michelle Stuart, Richard Tuttle, Trevor Winkfield, Robin Winters. Linoleum cuts with pochoir and woodcuts for the Grenfell Press, New York. Amenoff served as President of the National Academy of Design from 2001-2005. He is a founding board member of the CUE Art Foundation in New York City and serves as the CUE Art Foundation's Curator Governor. Amenoff has taught at Columbia for the last eighteen years, where he holds the Eve and Herman Gelman Chair of Visual Arts and is currently the Chair of the Visual Arts Division in the School of the Arts. He is currently the Vice-President of the National Academy. In 2011 he received the John Solomon Guggenheim Fellowship. Museum Collections Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Buffalo, NY Art Institute of Chicago; IL Baltimore Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Brooklyn, NY Butler Institute of American Art; Youngstown, OH Cleveland Museum of Art; Cleveland, OH Currier Gallery of Art; Manchester, NH Frances and Sidney Lewis Foundation; Richmond, VA Hood Museum of Art; Hanover, NH Honolulu Academy of Art; Honolulu, HW Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Kansas City, MO Maier Museum of Art; Lynchburg, VA Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, NY Milwaukee Museum of Art; Milwaukee, WI Minneapolis Institute of Art; MN Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary; Williamsburg, VA Museum of Fine Arts; Boston, MA Museum of Modern Art; New York, NY National Museum of American Art; Washington, DC Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase; NY New York Public Library, Spencer Collection...

Monotype on three sheets of paper Unframed Rachel Burgess is a visual artist based in New York. Originally from Boston, she received a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and a...

Monotype on three sheets of paper Unframed Rachel Burgess is a visual artist based in New York. Originally from Boston, she received a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and an...

One of a series of oil based monotypes on fine printmaking paper, subtle color design, symbolic and atmospheric figure/figures in cityscape

Signed in pencil to the lower margin. Number 13/15. Presented in a complimenting red gloss frame with a white card mount. On paper.

Monotype Dramatic imagery from Tom Bennett’s series of black and white monotypes, blending surrealistic mindscapes with stark realism About Tom Bennett: With quick brushstrokes, Tom...

"Arroyo" is an original woodcut and monotype by Carol Summers. The artist signed the piece. It is from an edition of 120 and depicts an abstract landscape in blues and greens. 14 1...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. Details: + Title: Diptych of Ancient Theaters + Year: 2023 + Edition Size: 50 + Stamped and Certificate of Authenticity provided + Measurements : Two panels of 70x100 cm (28x 40 in.), a total of 70x200cm (28x80 in.) + All cyanotype prints are made on high-quality Italian watercolor paper WHAT IS A CYANOTYPE? The cyanotype (a.k.a. sun-print) process is one of the oldest in the history of photography, dating back to the 1840's. Cyanotypes were then made famous by Anna Atkins...

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...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype of a gorgeous blue bouquet. Details: + Title: Blue Flower Bouquet + Year: 2024 + Edition Size: 100 + Medium: Acrylic Pain...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes and the desert modernism movement. It's made by layering paper cutouts...