Block Party: Woodcuts by American Masters (1895-1997)

Vija Celmins, Ada Gilmore Chaffee, Richard Diebenkorn, Arthur Wesley Dow, Helen Frankenthaler, Edna Boies Hopkins, Donald Judd, Ethel Mars, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Juliette S. Nichols, Fred Sandback, Maud Hunt Squire, Wayne Thiebaud, William Zorach Susan Sheehan Gallery is pleased to present Block Party, a group exhibition of woodcuts by American master printmakers from 1895 to 1997. Woodcut, the oldest form of printmaking, is a relief process in which an image is carved into a wooden block. The raised surface that remains is inked and printed, leaving the recessed areas blank in the final print. Deceivingly simple, woodcuts require meticulous planning and craftsmanship. Block Party features American artists who rise to the technical challenges of the medium. Helen Frankenthaler adjusts the medium to her expressive standards in Savage Breeze, adding a base layer of white to brighten the colors layered above. Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud employ traditional Japanese woodcut techniques to achieve planar simplicity in Blue with Red and Candy Apples. B.J.O. Nordfeldt's Shorecoming Sailor, My Hero and The Art Student, the Painting Class are rare examples of the white-line color woodcut, a single-block method for color printing that uses carved outlines to separate individually hand-painted areas. Pioneered by Nordfeldt, the white-line color woodcut was further developed by the Provincetown Printers, a highly experimental group of artists who settled in the coastal Massachusetts town in the early 20th century. The aptly named "Provincetown Print" brought new life to the medium, drawing on the traditions of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts and European modernism to produce vibrant, painterly compositions. Thematically committed to traditional subject matter, the Provincetown Printers portrayed scenes of daily life on the Cape. In William Zorach's Sailing, Provincetown, a family of three sails along the Provincetown coast. Fellow Provincetown artist Blanche Lazzell later pushed the medium toward abstraction, a direction foreshadowed by the stylized color woodcuts of Ethel Mars, Maud Hunt Squire, and Ada Gilmore Chaffee. Additional contemporary woodcuts by Vija Celmins, Donald Judd, and Fred Sandback underscore the medium's enduring appeal to artists, offering fresh perspectives on this centuries-old process.

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