Monumental Carol Summers ‘Rocky Mountains’ Color Woodcut, Signed, 1966

Details

Description

A striking large-scale original color woodcut by celebrated American printmaker Carol Summers (1925–2016), titled Rocky Mountains and created in 1966.

… Read more A striking large-scale original color woodcut by celebrated American printmaker Carol Summers (1925–2016), titled Rocky Mountains and created in 1966.

Executed during an important period in Summers’ career, this monumental landscape exemplifies the artist’s distinctive approach to color woodcut printing. Bold, saturated fields of color and simplified, semi-abstract forms transform the Rocky Mountain landscape into an atmospheric composition characteristic of Summers’ mid-century work.

The print is signed, titled, and numbered in pencil and comes from a limited edition of only 50.

Artist: Carol Summers (American, 1925–2016)
Title: Rocky Mountains
Date: 1966
Medium: Color woodcut on paper
Edition: Edition of 50
Signed: Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Acquired from auction house in Philadelphia, in 2025

Dimensions

Framed: 40.25” H × 51” W
(approximately 102 × 130 cm)

Sheet: 37” H × 48.5” W
(approximately 94 × 123 cm)

Condition & Framing

The artwork is currently presented in a simple frame under plexiglass. The existing frame provides protection for the work but is not archival or of a quality commensurate with the print, and professional reframing is recommended.

The sheet has been secured to a foam-core backing board. Should a future owner wish to reframe the work, careful professional removal from the backing is recommended to protect the paper.

Please refer to photographs for additional details regarding condition and presentation.

About Carol Summers

Carol Summers was an influential American printmaker best known for his innovative, large-scale color woodcuts and luminous interpretations of landscapes from around the world. Originally trained as a painter, Summers began concentrating on woodcuts around 1950 and developed a highly recognizable visual language characterized by saturated color, simplified forms, and atmospheric expanses of land and sky.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, Summers developed an unconventional printing process often referred to as the “Carol Summers Method.” Rather than following traditional woodcut techniques, Summers worked with oil-based inks, absorbent papers, and mineral spirits to diffuse the pigments through the fibers of the paper. The process produced the soft edges, saturated colors, and distinctive luminous quality for which his prints are known.

Along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers was associated with the development of the monumental American woodcut in the 1960s, dramatically expanding the traditional scale of the medium. While Baskin generally pursued figurative subjects, Summers turned toward landscape, reducing mountains, skies, water, and other natural forms into bold areas of color approaching abstraction.

Summers studied at Bard College and the Art Students League of New York, where he studied printmaking with Louis Schanker. His work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, including a one-man exhibition in 1964 that subsequently traveled throughout the United States.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Summers produced hundreds of woodcuts, typically in relatively small editions. Extensive travel throughout Europe, Asia, India, Mexico, Central America, and the American West provided a continuing source of inspiration for his imagery.

His work is represented in numerous museum and institutional collections, and he remains particularly admired for his important contribution to postwar American printmaking and the revival of the large-scale color woodcut.

In 1999, major exhibitions commemorating fifty years of Summers’ printmaking were presented by the Woodstock Artists Association and the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California. In 2004, he was named Printmaker of the Year by the Mid-America Print Council.

As Summers described his lifelong relationship with landscape:

“Landscapes are portraits of our mother earth, and sometimes, by extension, ourselves, focusing on some mood or aspect that echoes our human condition, and sometimes again, illuminates it.”

— Carol Summers See less