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| Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) - Biography |
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(13 Feb 2009) |
An American of Jewish descent, Leonard Baskin was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey where his father was a Rabbi and his youthful studies of the Talmud later had a considerable influence upon his art. He studied at Yale, 1941-43, followed by the New School for Social Research and a period of travel and work based in Paris and Florence. Whilst still a student he founded the Gehenna Press, a private press which subsequently produced over one hundred fine art, illustrated books .
Baskin also became deeply interested in the imagery of Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian art together with similar resonances which he found in Romanesque and Italian Gothic art. This eclectic mixture of influences was imaginatively used in his prints, for example the woodcut Man of Peace (1952) and also in his diverse artistic output as a sculptor, watercolourist and illustrator.
From 1953 Baskin taught printmaking at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts for twenty-one years and was himself a fine and prolific printmaker, producing woodcuts, lithographs and etchings. His subject matter included portraits, flower studies and biblical, classical and mythological images.
Although he spent most of his life in America Baskin did live near Tiverton in rural Devon for nine years where he became a friend of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. He illustrated Hughes’ famous book The Crow and Plath dedicated her poem, Sculptor to Baskin. Given Hughes’ deep involvement with the English countryside he may have passed on to Baskin Oscar Wilde’s definition of foxhunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable which in turn seems to have inspired Baskin’s amusing quip that Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable.
Baskin was a renowned sculptor and received important public commissions such as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the bronze statue, Holocaust Memorial at Ann Arbor, Michigan. His sculpture and prints are represented in many important public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, the British Museum and the Vatican Museum.
Baskin’s graphic work remains highly regarded and at an important retrospective exhibition held at Portland Art Museum in 2007 the curator, Marnie Stark, stated in an age where the image of man is often a glossed semblance for popular consumption, Baskin’s work sings the flesh back on to the bones of our humanity through an artistic vision of wrenching honesty and tremendous power. |
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