Variation on a Theme of Circles

 

Doris Seidler

  1912 - 2010 (biography)

1962  

color woodcut 

21 x 31" image size 

pencil signed, lower right 

Epreuve d'artiste 

titled, lower center; dated after signature 

 

ivory Moriki laid paper 

published 

 

DOS115 

SOLD

By the 1960s Doris Seidler's work moved further into the non-objective as she began experimenting with larger formats, especially in color woodcut. Much of her earlier work was delicately rendered, if explosive, meditating on war, religion, and the fractured landscape of post-World War II England. After she and her family settled for the second time in the US in 1949, she furthered her own studies in printmaking even after her mentor, Stanley William Hayter, had returned to Paris, taking his famed Atelier 17 with him.

This oversized print reads like a geological cross section, revealing layers of sediment, rock and archeological finds, rendered in warm earth tones. The blocks used were large enough that it would have been nearly impossible to avoid knots and other inconsistencies in the grain; however, they play to good effect in this textural piece.Variation on a Theme of Circles is a window onto the evolution of one of the 20th century's leading Abstract printmakers.