Woodcut Landscape Prints

Picture of the opening of the temporary Diet building is an original artwork realized in the 1890s by Ginko Adachi (born 1853; active c. 1870 – 1908). Sheet dimensions: 22 x 48 cm. ...

Image dimensions: 14 x 18 cm. Country House is an original modern artwork realized between the end of the XIX Century and the first years of the XX Century by Marcel Haussaire. Ori...

Riverside Houses is an original woodcut on paper realized by an Anonymous artist of the XX century. With the monogram of the artist on the lower left....

Image dimensions: 9.5 x 12.5 cm. Mississippi is a black and white xylograph on paper, realized in 1890 by anonymous artist. Of little dimensions but high fineness, this original print portrays a historical view on the New Orleans port...

Paul BAUDIER (1881-1962) The Old Tree, 1927 Original woodcut Handsigned in pencil Numbered /160 On vellum 32.5 x 25.5 cm (c. 13 x 10 in) Bears the blind stamp of the editor 'Imagier...

Modern Landscape is an original xylograph realized during the half of the 20th Century by an anonymous artist. The artwork represents a view of a village with several buildings and ...

Image dimensions: 7.2 x 12.7 cm. New Orleans is a black and white xylograph on paper, realized in 1890 by anonymous artist, of incredible fineness. Of little dimensions but high meticulousness of sign, this original print presents us a lost and historical view on the New Orleans port...

Specchio (Mirror) is an original woodcut on paper realized by G. Guerrini. Very good condition. Included passepartout: 40 x 30 cm.

Prisoners is an Original Woodcut print realized by A. H. Laboureur. The artwork on a green paper is in good condition, glued on a page of magazine. No signature. Titled on the uppe...

Image dimensions: 23.5 x 15.8 cm. La rue Saint-Louis is a wonderful black and white xilograph on paper, realized in 1880 by Bertrand, after Valnay. Signed on plate on sides. Title ...

Arab Street is an original woodcut print realized by Ugo Lucerni in the early 20th century. Good conditions. The artwork is depicted through strong strok...

Aimé Jourde Imprimeur is an original Original Woodcut realized by an unknown artist in 1920. Ex Libris Aimé Jourde, no signature. Very good condition included a white cardboard pas...

Vecchio Campo Santo (Old Cemetery) is an original woodcut print realized by Rafaele Angelo Oppio in the early 20th century. Good conditions. The artwork is depicted through strong ...

Ex Libris Alma Parna is an original Contemporary Artwork realized in the first half of the 20th Century. Original B/W woodcut print on ivory-colored paper. The work is glued on ...

Ex Libris Pokomskij is an original Contemporary Artwork realized in the 1940s Original woodcut print on ivory-colored paper. Sigled in pencil on the lower margin. The work is g...

Ex Libris Pavelky is an original Modern Artwork realized in the Half of the 20th Century. Original B/W woodcut on ivory-colored paper. Hand-signed in pencil on the lower right co...

Ex Libris Riccardo Sacchetto is an original Contemporary Artwork realized in the early 20th Century . Original woodcut print on ivory-colored paper. The work is glued on cardbo...

Head Pastures, original woodcut and monotype. Pencil signed, titled and dated to the lower margin. Presented in a reeded frame. On japanese paper.

Holstein Countryside, original woodcut. Pencil signed, titled and dated to the lower margin. On Japanese paper.

Original woodcut. Pencil signed, titled and dated in German to the lower right. On Japanese paper.

Wandering monks in the courtyard of Konoura is an original modern artwork realized by Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826 – 1869) in the 1840s. Good impression with reduced palette mainly in...

This screenprint, Cultured Woman – Tokyo, is a sharp, knowing example of Art Hazelwood’s satirical voice—stylish, unsettling, and quietly biting. The elongated female figure dominates the composition, her body exaggerated into a narrow vertical column that reads as both fashionable and faintly grotesque. Her pose is elegant yet strained, chin lifted, gaze distant, projecting confidence that borders on caricature. Hazelwood’s line work is incisive and deliberate. The woman’s clothing—fur-trimmed coat, patterned dress, high boots—signals cosmopolitan sophistication, while the acid clarity of her facial features undermines any straightforward glamour. Makeup becomes mask-like; refinement tips into artifice. The palette is cool and controlled, reinforcing a sense of emotional remove beneath the polished surface. At her feet, the small dog functions as a critical counterpoint. It echoes her presence while subtly mocking it, grounding the image in Hazelwood’s characteristic irony. The pairing suggests themes of status, performance, and cultural self-consciousness, with Tokyo serving less as a literal place than as a symbol of globalized style and curated identity. Like much of Hazelwood’s work, the print resists easy judgment. It is neither cruel nor celebratory, but observant—a portrait of modern sophistication rendered with wit, skepticism, and a razor-edged sense of humor. Signed and numbered color woodcut from the edition of 15. Modern woman in Tokyo; signed and titled edition of 15. Art Hazelwood calls himself artist, instigator and impresario to define the three intertwining areas of his practice. He uses printmaking within a range of political allegory and satire making work from political posters to fine press edition artist books. He has curated and organized a range of exhibitions at venues from museums to immigrant centers. He has worked for over 20 years with homeless rights groups; creating prints, and street posters, and has authored one book and contributed to another on art and homelessness. He has been a regular visiting guest artist at San Quentin State Prison and teaches currently at the San Francisco Art Institute. He organized the San Francisco Poster...

Paphy is an original modern artwork realized in Germany in the Mid-19th Century. Original B/W woodcut print on Ivory Paper. Inscripted on the Upper margin in Capital Letters: Paph...

Composition is an original Woodcut from ""quaderni dell'Eroica", realized by Giorgio Wenter Marini in 1925. Good conditions. The artwork is dep...

Ex Libris Jarmil Chladek is an original Contemporary Artwork realized in the 1960s. Original Colored woodcut print on paper. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right corner in...

Ex Libris Konyve is a Contemporary Artwork realized in the Early 20th Century Original B/W woodcut print on ivory-colored paper. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right corn...

Landscape is a reprint of a woodblock realized after Shuko Yishi (1564- ?) The State of preservation is very good. Included a passepartout: 50 x 32.5 cm The artwork represents a p...

Landscape is an original xilography artwork realized by Mino Maccari in 1925 ca. Hand-signed on the lower left Included a white Passepartout: 37 x 52 The state of preservation is v...

Desert is a beautiful black and white xylograph on ivory colored paper, by the French landscapist Marcel Gaillard (1886 -1947). This original print, representing an oriental buildin...

Mariko Station, a Mad Caricature (Mariko shukuba no kyoga) Color woodcut, 1872 Signed in cartouche lower left corner (see photo) From the series: "53 Stations by Calligraphy and Pain...

Bird’s Eye View of Glascow original 1888 wood engraving is from The Graphic by H.W. Brewer who was well known for his aerial views of topographical panoramas. He was also the fa...

“War Chronicles of Osaka” (Osaka gunki no uchi). Okubo Hikozaemon, raising his sword, protects the hidden Tokugawa shogun from the spear of Gorô Matabei Mototsugu in a moonlit fores...

Monte Cassino by Italo Scanga, Italian/American (1932–2001) Date: 1984 One Color Woodcut, Signed and numbered in Pencil Edition of 10 Size: 28 in. x 20 i...

Bird on a Tree is an original signed limited edition ( 24/60 ) woodblock print by the Italian artist Alessandro Nastasio. It is in very good condition. Paper size 16.25 x 13.75 image 7 x 6.75 Nastasio was born in Milan in 1934. In 1952 he followed the “free school of the nude” led by Aldo Salvatori. In 1960 he attended the Atelier of Giorgio Upilio where Giacometti, Lam, Fontana, De Chirico worked and where he had the opportunity to study the themes of the inspiring myths. He worked at the MAF foundry with the master Tullio Figini who shared the secrets of the lost wax Renaissance fusion and where he met the masters Crocetti, Manfrini, Manzu , Minguzzi, Fabbri,. He then moved on to Quinto de Stampi at the De Andreis foundry where Marino Marini, Pomodoro, Rudy Wach, Strebelle, Negri and Rosental operated. A regular reader of the great sapienzal texts of antiquity, he trained in particular on the Bible which he illustrated with woodcuts, aquatints, etchings and linocuts, especially the Song of Songs, the book of Ecclesiastes and several pages of the Gospels He also drew his inspiration from the philosophical-religious tradition of the Eastern world through the reading of Rig-Veda, Upanisad and the Matnavi of Rumi. In 1966-67 he obtained the chair at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and for thirty years he devoted himself to the teaching of Art Education in various schools. Nastasio created works both pictorial and plastic in collaboration with famous architects such as: Figini and Pollini, De Carli, Gardella, Faranda, Selleri, Ponti. His great talent soon came to the attention of various art dealers: first Max G...

Raoul Dufy, French (1877 - 1953) - Crows in Field, Year: 1912, Medium: Woodcut on laid paper, signed in pencil, Image Size: 1.5 x 3.5 inches, Size: 7.25 x 5.5 in. (18.42 x 13.97 cm...

Black ink on buff Japanese rice paper. This image came from watching the sea birds on Kauai, Hawaii soaring along the bluffs on the north shore and diving for fish in the sea. Fishi...

A limited edition woodcut on paper print by Mychael Barratt of Vincent Van Gogh on a night walk though London, as blue, turquoise and browns outline Big Ben and the Parliament in the distance.  Additional information: Mychael Barratt  Once upon a time in London, Night  [2023] Woodcut on paper Signed and titled in pencil Numbered from the edition of 100  Please note that insitu images are purely an indication of how a piece may look Please note sheet sizes may differ. Image size: Height: 28cm Width: 28cm Complete size of sheet: Height: 39.5cm Width: 38.2cm Depth: 0.1cm ARTIST BIO: Mychael Barratt was born in Toronto, Canada, however, considers himself to be a Londoner since arriving for what was supposed to be a two-week stay thirty years ago. He is a narrative artist whose work is steeped in imagery relating to art history, literature, theatre and everything else that overfills his bookshelves. He was an artist in residence for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre...

A limited edition woodcut on paper print by Mychael Barratt of Vincent Van Gogh with a lady on a walk in london, passing a grand tree and Great Pagoda. The print is compromised of blue, green, purple, pink and yellow tones Additional information: Mychael Barratt  Once upon a time in London, Afternoon [2023] Woodcut on paper Signed and titled in pencil Numbered from the edition of 100  Please note that insitu images are purely an indication of how a piece may look Please note sheet sizes may differ. Image size: Height: 28cm Width: 28cm Complete size of sheet: Height: 39.5cm Width: 38.3cm Depth: 0.1cm ARTIST BIO: Mychael Barratt was born in Toronto, Canada, however, considers himself to be a Londoner since arriving for what was supposed to be a two-week stay thirty years ago. He is a narrative artist whose work is steeped in imagery relating to art history, literature, theatre and everything else that overfills his bookshelves. He was an artist in residence for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre...

"Flags" is a stunning woodcut from 2013. It is a very stylized view over a wide flower meadow. Typically, Katz is using a clear and straight color palette. It is beautiful to see how...

An original woodblock print dated 1965, titled "Our Town" but signed illegibly.

Robert Greenhalf Berwick’s Swans and Lapwings Limited Edition Print Woodcut on Paper Edition of 100 Paper Size: H 38.5cm x W 41 cm Image Size: H 27.5c...

A charming rural scene by the British artist Charles William Taylor. A sheepdog watches over the penned flock in the foreground, with the lively fair beyond. Inscribed with the artis...

Pellew, Claughton (British, 1890-1966). THE RETURN. Ashmolean 17. Wood engraving, 1925. Edition of 25. Initialed in the block, and titled, signed, dated and...

Three women in the Saruwaka-machi District with a view of Kinryûzan Temple seen from the famous landmark Matsuchiyama. The woodblock print is from the series "Famous Places in Edo". ...

Robert Greenhalf Curlews and Woodpigeons Limited Edition Print Woodcut on Paper Edition of 100 Paper Size: H 26cm x W49 cm Image Size: H 16cm x W 38.5...

Frasconi, Antonio (American, born Uruguay, 1919-2013). LA SALUTE. Color Woodcut, 1967. Edition of 20, Titiled, inscribed 10/20, signed, and dated, all in pencil. 22 1/4 x 34 1/2 inch...

A beauty turns to admire the Kirifuri Waterfall in Nikko Province. She holds the handle of an umbrella and wears fashionable clothing that is beautifully printed. This series pairs f...

House in Kyoto Color woodcut, 1963 Signed in white brush bottom left of image, along with the artist's red stamp (see photo) Titled, dated and numbered in pencil bottom margin (see p...

Meissner, Leo. FOOTBRIDGE - PERKINS COVE. Wood-engraving, not dated. Edition of 60. Numbered 40/60, titled and signed, all in pencil. 9 x 6 inches, 229 x 152 mm. Framed to 16 3/4 x ...

A limited edition woodcut on paper print by Mychael Barratt of Vincent Van Gogh enjoying a game of pool. A cat appears next to the pool  with a group of people sat at tables, in a house of burgundy...

Nason, Thomas. ON THE ISLAND. BPL 213. Wood engraving, 1937. Inscribed "Ed. 80" and signed and dated in pencil. 5 3/8 x 10 inches (image), 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches (sheet). In excellen...

Frasconi, Antonio. NIGHT FLIGHT. Color Woodcut, 1958. Edition of 20. Signed and dated, numbered 10/20, and inscribed "imp," all in pencil. 19 x 34 inches,...

The Surgeon’s Photograph by Mychael Barratt [2022] limited_edition and hand signed by the artist Woodcut Print on Paper Edition number of 50 Image size: H:50 cm x W:49 cm Complete S...

Monte Cassino by Italo Scanga, Italian/American (1932–2001) Date: 1984 Woodcut, Signed and numbered in Pencil Edition of 25 Size: 28 in. x 20 in. (71.12 ...

Hanaley Macho - Figurative - Woodcut Print By Marc Zimmerman Limited Edition 01/04 This masterwork is exhibited in the Zimmerman Gallery, Carmel CA. Immerse yourself in the captiv...

Bernhardt, John (American 1921-1963. QUEENSBRIDGE. Color Woodcut, 1965. Ttiled, signed, dated and annotated "To Smitty" in pencil. 17 3/4 x 28 inches. In very good condition. Framed ...

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...

Red Sand by Rod Nelson [2022] Please note that insitu images are purely an indication of how a piece may look Red Sand is a beautifully crafted woodcut prin...

"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...

Color woodcut, Edition 10. In Buck’s "Sea Mount", the artist portrays an erupting volcano and a lava flow that carries cars, garbage and debris into a tropical landscape and a bloom...