This impressive life-sized woodcut showing a man behind a barbed-wire fence releasing a dove was made by American Modernist, Boston Expressionist Leonard Baskin (1922-2000). Baskin studied at New York University,  Yale University, The New School,  Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and Accademia di Belle Arti. He worked in sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. He eschewed the abstract expressionist movement and persisted in more figurative work focussing on representing the human form. “Man of Peace” is in museum and private collections worldwide. Produced in the time after the devastation left by WWII, Baskin’s monumental print depicts the hopefulness that the world was experiencing. Baskin said, “Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory.” A partial list of museums that hold his work are the British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, MOMA, National Gallery of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Princeton University.

Titled in pencil “Man of Peace” in lower left, signed in pencil “Baskin” in lower right

Medium: woodcut on paper

Size of paper: 85” x 40” Size of outside frame: 88” x 43”

Condition: There is a small loss in the lower right corner, along with several light stains. It is housed in archival materials and with plexiglass to minimize the possibility of breakage. The custom black cap frame is in excellent condition.