Untitled abstraction

Hans Burkhardt

Hans Gustav Burkhardt did a series of intricate abstract linocuts in 1983. These works were all experimental and rarely editioned, and varied in composition and color from impression to impression. Burhardt's interest was more in the process than in the potential saleability of the impression.

Burkhardt would start cutting a random design into the linoleum block. He would then use caustics to eat away the surface of the block, painting it on with a brush. He would also use glue and other materials on the surface, like a collagraph. The end product resulted in a painterly impression that seems spontaneous and gestural.

As a result of this "spontaneity", these works are sometimes mistaken for lithographs. However, Burkhardt did very few lithographs. When questioned by Tamarind founder June Wayne about how he did these he supposedly told her that, like her advice to young printmakers, he "breaks all the rules."