Leonard BaskinLeonard Baskin Watercolor Ink Illustration Painting Darkened Man, Nude with Bird, c.1957

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Leonard Baskin (American, 1922-2000) ink and gouache drawing on paper titled "Darkened Man", signed lower right, circa 1957.
Provenance: Grace … Read more Leonard Baskin (American, 1922-2000) ink and gouache drawing on paper titled "Darkened Man", signed lower right, circa 1957.
Provenance: Grace Borgenicht gallery, Jeffrey M. Kaplan collection. bears label verso
Art: 31" H x 22" W; Frame: 36" H x 27" W.

Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.
Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated Sculpto to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960).
The Funeral Contege (1997) bronze, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.
His public commissions include a bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, erected in 1994 for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
His works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums.
The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. The McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works (some religious and biblical), most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin.
He was included in the MoMA show, Summer Exhibition: New Acquisitions; Recent American Prints, 1947–1953; Katherine S. Dreier Bequest; Kuniyoshi and Spencer; Expressionism in Germany; Varieties of Realism along with Alexander Archipenko, Francis Bacon, Balthus, Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Eugene Berman, Reg Butler, Lovis Corinth, Andre Derain, Otto Dix, Raoul Dufy, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud, George Grosz, Alexei Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, Roberto Matta, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and more. In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery, they showed many great artists, Chaim Koppelman, for many years, headed the gallery's Print Division; printmakers such as Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover, Edmond Casarella, Vincent Longo, and Nicholas Krushenick were frequent exhibitors. the gallery has represented many well-known artists, including Richard Anuszkiewicz, Robert Blackburn, Lois Dodd, William King, Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman, Roy Lichtenstein, Harold Krisel, Larry Rivers, Clare Romano, and Arnold Schmidt. . In 1966 he was featured in the documentary, "Images of Leonard Baskin" by American filmmaker Warren Forma.
Leonard Baskin was a first cousin of American modern dancer and choreographer Sophie Maslow. He died at age 77 on June 3, 2000, in Northampton, where he resided. The Art Institute of Portland has a memorial to him.

Awards and honors:
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966)
Guggenheim Fellowship
Gold Medal of The American Academy of Arts and Letters
Special Medal of Merit of the American Institute of Graphic Arts
Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design
Elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member in 1985; became full member in 1994. See less