"Saul Sophrin: A Portfolio of Prints"

FOREWORD


 



    This book is a presentation of the graphic work of Saul Sophrin; an oeuvre spanning over sixty years and including linoleum prints, woodcuts, and serigraphs. The artist’s work is firmly grounded in 20th century printmaking. In Sophrin’s prints, there is a confluence of influences; he was drawn to the bold, innovative use of woodcut and linoleum printmaking of the German Expressionists and the powerful woodcut books and images of Flemish printmaker Franz Masereel. His sensibilities as an American artist drew strongly from the humanistic impulses of the Ashcan School and what followed. In his images one can find echoes of John Sloan, Edward Hopper, Martin Lewis and others. Sophrin emerged from his studies at Cooper Union in the late ‘40’s, entering the art world on the heels of the great surge of socially conscious art making that was the WPA.

    While pursuing a full-time career in graphic design in New York City, he simultaneously worked in his own Brooklyn studio; painting, drawing and putting out a stream of prints which has continued for over six decades. During his years in New York, he continued painting studies under Isaac Soyer and others.


     In his linocuts, he began exploring in black and white, the bones of his city; it’s buildings, streets, conveyances, parks, and those who peopled them – the masses of individual people who called the city their home.

    The earliest linocuts of subway and city life, done in the late 1940’s, employ a stunning black and white simplicity.  As the printmaking continued, Sophrin developed a sophisticated rhythm of lines, marks and patterns, carving an increased form and depth into the rich black which he found so visually exciting, and deepening the works’ narrative qualities as well. In the 1970’s and into the ‘90’s, Sophrin created many color prints; usually using multiple blocks to obtain the different colors, but sometimes employing the one-block reductive method used most famously by Picasso. He explored inventive inking and hand-coloring processes. Sophrin continued to experiment with new uses of technique and style, expressing through the printmaking process, a changing, developing vision of the world he saw around him.

    His use of serigraphy (silk-screen) started early, and re-emerged in the 80’s, when, with his wife Helen as studio assistant, he printed a series of small-scale serigraphed cards for sale and distribution. Sophrin produced and distributed remarkably large editions of prints  annually. He also produced four subscription limited-edition series with prose text entitled Notes in Black and White.

    Interwoven into Sophrin’s lifetime of observation and commentary on urban American life, is an equally in-depth exploration of musical themes, interiors, still-lifes, and portraits, most notably of his favorite model, his wife Helen. What he presents is the harmonious, whole-world view of one artist, through the lens of the print.

                                                                                                 

- Diane Sophrin
2011

 

 

 


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