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A master of various media,
Leonard Baskin creates sculpture in wood, stone and bronze;
executes graphic work in woodcut, etching and lithography; and
also paints, draws and designs books. He began making woodcuts in
1949 and considers his dozen or so "Gargantuan" woodcuts (the
first being the 1952 Man of Peace) as perhaps the most
interesting. His woodcuts exhibit a mastery of black and white
through cutting techniques that emphasize the texture of the
wood. Baskin characterizes his woodcuts as "insistently black,
complexly cut, and reasonably successful in causing alarm,
misgivings and exaltations." They reflect his fascination with
the human figure on both a physical and a mental plane. Baskin
terms himself a "moral realist" and concerns himself with
examining man's fragility and mortality, trying to answer the
ultimate questions of human existence by "holding the cracked
mirror up to man."
Born August 15, 1922, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Baskin studied
at Yale University's School of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1943.
Interrupted by three years of service in the Navy, he later
resumed his art studies at the New School for Social Research in
New York, the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, and the
Academia di Belle Arte in Florence. His many medals include those
from such prestigious organizations as the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the
American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Skowhegan School in
Maine. He has had innumerable exhibitions here and abroad, and
his work is represented in major museums on both sides of the
Atlantic.
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