I think Wengenroth has established himself as my favorite printmaker, as you all have seen from the number of his prints I’ve posted–just about one a week. I have had to restrain myself to keep the number that low. I came across a description of part of his relationship to printmaking: “…Wengenroth has that scholarly reverence toward the medium of black and white which all the outstanding printmakers, from Durer down, have shown….He believes that there is a ‘black and white philosophy’ developed in a printmaker; that in a black and white print, values may be orchestrated in tones that are related to one another solely with the aim of attaining an abstract beauty, in a similar way that a painter may use certain color relations purely to attain this special kind of abstract beauty.” (Offin, 1939) As I quoted in the description of the first Wengenroth print I posted: Andrew Wyeth once called him “America’s greatest living artist working in black and white”.
The Wengenroth prints I have posted have been devoid of visible living creatures–just gorgeous scenes, which one might almost call a still life in nature. He tended to portray such scenes more often than scenes with animals or people in them, but I discovered this beautiful print from Cape Ann in December 1972 with birds. The fact that it was a scene the artist saw in the month of December was obviously appealing.
Note to self: it’s worth searching out higher resolution digital images if you’re not looking at an original impression. Even the images printed on paper in a catalogue raisonee may not be as high quality as really good digital image.
Cape Ann Marshes (1972, lithograph)
