I fell in love with woodcuts when I attended a German Expressionist Art Show at Los Angeles County Museum in the late ’80s. The exhibit featured early 20th Century woodcut prints from artists such as Max Beckmann, Felix Müller, Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I’d never heard of these artists but their work was stunning.
The artists featured in the LACMA show were non-conformists protesting the emergence of Adolf Hitler. Many were Jewish and recognized the threat posed by the Nazis. Hitler, a failed artist himself, viewed these artists as enemies of the Third Reich. He considered their work sordid and degenerate and sought to destroy their careers. He went so far as to define the type of art he found deplorable.
Works of art that are not capable of being understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence until at long last they find someone sufficiently browbeaten to endure such stupid or impudent twaddle with patience. This will never again find their way to the German people. -Adolf Hitler
In July 1937, the Nazis sponsored two art exhibits in Munich. One included artwork approved by Hitler. The second, dubbed the Degenerate Art Show, featured art that Hitler considered culturally “dangerous.” The Degenerate exhibit far outdrew the Hitler-approved art show. Many of the so-called depraved works were woodcuts.
Woodcuts are bold, brusque and striking with rough and stylized lines reflecting a rebellious spirit. They are typically black and white with flat tonal gradations and ample negative space. The images have a graphic element (like comic books) and often appear two-dimensional. Woodcut prints are deceptively brazen and audacious. When I first viewed the German Expressionist woodcuts it was as if I was exploring someone’s psyche. There was a brutal honesty to the images, a direct reflection of a person’s soul.
In the early 2000’s, I sought out Woodcut exhibitions all over the west coast. I drove to museums in San Francisco, Oregon, Arizona and Utah. I became familiar with the colorful Japanese woodcuts of the Edo Period (1600–1870), the religious woodcut traditions of Mexico and the Depression-era American woodcut from artists like Lynd Ward and Paul Landacre.
In 2005, my wife surprised me on my birthday with a set of woodcut carving tools. This began my woodcut journey. I started with a 4" x 6" linocut block (a cut sheet of linoleum adhered to a thin wood block). Linoleum is softer than wood and easier to carve.
There are four steps in the woodcut printing process. First, you draw an image on paper. That image is then transferred to a block of wood or linoleum (linoleum as an art medium debuted around 1895). Third, you carve the block using a sharp tool called a gouge. The area you don’t want to print you carve away. What remains on the block is a negative space image in reverse. Text and numbers appear backwards. The fourth step involves inking the block and making a print on paper or fabric. Additional steps include touch-ups or adding color.
Woodcut prints first appeared in China around 200 AD. Craftsmen carved blocks from pear or jujube trees using sharp knives, awls and chisels. Once carved, the block became a stamp for printing images on silk or paper. They printed with ink from the sacs of squid or cuttlefish. The earliest woodcuts were used for textiles, religious texts and paper money. Woodblock printing spread to Japan in the 8th Century and to Europe in the 1300s via the Silk Road.
The golden age of European woodcut printing spanned the late 15th Century to the early 16th Century. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a German master woodcut artist who introduced cross-hatching and complex tonal variations. Dürer’s prints displayed three-dimensional depth. In 1515, a German zoo obtained a grey rhinoceros from India. Dürer read descriptions of the animal (he never visited the zoo) and sketched the strange-looking animal. He carved a woodcut in his studio. Though the resulting image is anatomically flawed with armor-like plates and metallic rivets, the print is one of the most famous and beloved historical woodcuts.
Woodcut printing is inexpensive. Rather than paints, easels and a fine sable brush, an artist simply needs a wood block, a set of blades and black ink. Printers can make multiple prints from a single carved block. In the 1850’s, Wild West printmakers used woodcuts to print wanted posters. Newspapers and periodicals like Harper’s Weekly turned to woodcuts as magazine covers and illustrations to accompany stories.
The New York Times hired freelance engravers to capture dramatic city scenes like building fires or car accidents. These craftsmen used boxwood blocks allowing for fine detail. In the 1890’s, the availability of photography made woodcut artists expendable. Today, these late 19th Century blocks are not considered fine art but mass-market ephemera. Modern-day collectors can buy early New York Times wood blocks for just $25.
Gustave Doré was a French artist who carved detailed images using woodcuts and metal-plate engravings. In 1866 he released the Doré Bible with more than 200 dramatic woodcuts from the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha.
The most well-known woodcut is probably The Great Wave off Kanagawa carved by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai around 1831. The image depicts three long boats about to capsize under a massive cresting wave with Mt. Fuji in the background. Japanese woodcut art, known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), is extraordinarily detailed with myriad colors. This requires the carving of a master key block (using Cherry wood) then the carving of additional separate woodblocks for each color. Artists carved tiny registration marks in each block to keep the separate colors aligned when printing.
In the early 1900’s, Japanese woodcuts inspired a worldwide revival of woodcut printing. European artists like Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin experimented with woodcut printing in their studios. Gustav Klimt collected Japanese woodcuts and emulated their brusque style in his paintings. Salvador Dali carved a series of surrealist woodcuts in a publication of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
In 1959, Pablo Picasso tried his hand at linocut printing with a piece he titled “The Grape Harvesters.” The image features a woman at a picnic eating grapes from a bowl. Picasso utilized a reduction method from a single block where he carved away a portion of the block, printed a layer of color, then carved away more of the block before printing the second and third colors. When he reached the final carving step, his original design was destroyed making it impossible to reprint the image. (Reduction woodcuts are often called “suicide blocks.”)
During the Depression, American artist Lynd Ward carved woodcuts for a series of wordless novels. His 1929 book Gods’ Man features 139 captionless woodcut prints telling a Faustian story of an artist who trades his soul for a magic paintbrush. Ward studied art in Germany and was influenced by the European woodcut printers Hans Mueller and Frans Masereel. He met some of the artists later featured in Hitler’s Degenerate Art Show. Ward’s work was so influential, he inspired cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Will Eisner to create their own graphic novels.
Paul Landacre was an artist born in Los Angeles in 1893. He elevated woodcut printing to the status of fine art. He mastered the techniques of “cross-hatching” (carving parallel lines to create shades of dark and light) and “flecking” (using the grain patterns in wood to influence final prints). He was inspired by the American West and carved woodcut images of Big Sur, Monterey and the Palm Springs desert. Landacre used expensive inks and imported Japanese paper. His carving process was so meticulous, he spent weeks (or months) on a single block. He only printed 150 woodcuts in his lifetime.
Women were also prominent woodcut printers. My favorite female woodcut artist is Käthe Kollwitz. Born in 1867, Kollwitz depicted the ravages of life caused by war, poverty and hunger. She suffered from migraines and depression exacerbated by the loss of her son in World War I. She carved woodcuts to express her grief.
Kollwitz’s woodcut prints were among those banned by Hitler. She and her husband were threatened with deportation to a concentration camp. They resolved to commit suicide if captured by the Gestapo. She stayed one step ahead of the Nazis, moving from Berlin to Nordhausen to Dresden. Her Berlin house was bombed destroying her prints, paintings and carved blocks. She died at age 77 just two weeks before the end of World War II. She completed more than 275 woodcut and linocut prints in her lifetime.
My own woodcut printing journey is far less intense than the woodcut artists of the early 20th Century. My forte is portraiture. My first woodcut portrait was of an old college friend made for his 40th birthday. It took about sixty hours. When my friend unwrapped the gift he stared in silence before finally looking up and saying, “I thought we were friends.”
Woodcuts aren’t always flattering. They reduce an image to a series of stark shapes and harsh lines. My wife calls me a “reverse plastic surgeon” since I add wrinkles and scars to faces instead of taking them away. In 2008, I carved a Faces of Woodcut series featuring the unorthodox mugs of Ernest Borgnine, Don Knotts, Steve Buscemi and basketball announcer Jeff Van Gundy. I exhibited at a downtown Los Angeles gallery and the images sold out in weeks. Afterwards, I received commissions to carve personal portraits as hideous as possible. Not wanting to become the “ugly woodcut guy,” I abandoned this series and moved on to more expressionist prints.
In 2010, I began teaching woodcut printing. I teach classes at parks, community centers, senior homes, churches and synagogues, galleries and museums. I was shocked at how popular the classes became. Students were starved for an analog crafting experience and my workshops sold out weeks in advance. I’ve taught classes with specific themes such as a classic cinema workshop at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and a self-portrait woodcut class at Barnsdall Art Park in Los Feliz.
I combined my love for Los Angeles and creative writing for a gallery series titled “Los Angeles Woodcut Tales.” I carved woodcuts inspired by the City of Angels and wrote stories to accompany the prints. In 2012, I carved a woodcut of Los Angeles author Charles Bukowski for a series at the downtown Grand Performances Stages. I presented a framed print to Bukowski’s widow Linda. In 2024, my “LA Freeway System” woodcut print exhibited at the Bunker Hill subway station for the LA On the Move exhibit.
Woodcuts become my panacea during COVID. As the world went into lockdown, I immersed myself in an activity that kept me calm and peaceful amid the chaos of the world. Woodcut printing is a slow and methodical medium requiring patience and mindfulness. You need to focus on each individual gouge similar to focusing on your breath during meditation.
There’s no way to erase mistakes on a woodcut. Either you live with them (learning to appreciate imperfection) or you start over. When I’m carving, I’m reminded of my paternal grandfather who was a Torah scribe. He inked Jewish Torahs by hand. His process took up to a year. If one letter was missing or smudged then the Torah was considered invalid and he’d have to start over.
Sometimes when I’m carving a block my cat will jump into my lap and purr. These moments are among the most beautiful I’ve ever experienced. Woodcut printing allows me a practice of mindfulness reminding me to Be Still and rejoice in the moment. I framed a quote from Rumi on the wall above my art table that captures what woodcut carving means to me.
This silence, this moment, every moment, if it’s genuinely inside you, brings you what you need.