Leonard Baskin

Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.

Life and work

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 "Sculptor" to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960).

File:Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial 12 - July 2012.JPG

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, most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin.

In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery. 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

Further reading

• Lance Hidy, "My Studies at the Free Academy of Gehenna", in Parenthesis; 21 (2011 Autumn), p. 5–11.
• Barbara Blumenthal, "Arno Werner, Leonard Baskin, Harold P. McGrath and the Tradition of Book Arts in Massachusetts", in Parenthesis; 21 (2011 Autumn), p. 17–20.
• Sidney Berger, "Leonard Baskin and the Art of Printing (The Ego and the Ecstasy)", in Parenthesis; 17 (2009 Autumn), pp. 13–19.
• Bruce Chandler, Lance Hidy, Barry Moser, In the School of Baskin (2008. Society of Printers, Boston, USA)
• Lisa Unger Baskin, The Gehenna Press: The Work of Fifty Years, 1942–1992 [exhibition catalogue].
• Central Conference of American Rabbis, A Passover Haggadah: The New Union Haggadah with drawings by Leonard Baskin, New York: Viking Press, 1982.
• Jaffe, Irma B., The Sculpture of Leonard Baskin, New York, Viking Press, 1980.

External links

• Official website of Leonard Baskin & The Gehenna Press
• Galerie St. Etienne – Official gallery representative of the Estate of Leonard Baskin
• Exhibition at the Smith College Museum of Art: "Medea & Her Sisters: Leonard Baskin's Images of Women"
• Leonard Baskin & The Gehenna Press, 1951–1971
• Leonard Baskin & The Gehenna Press
• R.Michelson Galleries
• Collection of Leonard Baskin etchings at Annex Galleries
• Leonard Baskin and the Gehenna Press collection at Brandeis University
• Leonard Baskin at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Leonard Baskin at Library of Congress Authorities, with 164 catalog records (and Gehenna Press, 70 records)