Woodcuts

In 1952, Walter Feldman made his first woodcut, The Final Agony—a remarkably ambitious print for a young artist just out of graduate school. He had recently completed his MA and was teaching at Yale when an older artist introduced him to woodcut, a moment Feldman later said, “changed the entire course of my life.”

For a first attempt, the scale and complexity of The Final Agony were extraordinary. When Feldman submitted the woodcut to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1952 print exhibition, it won the Print Prize. That early recognition marked not only a major career milestone, but the beginning of Feldman’s lifelong devotion to printmaking.

I literally fell in love with the feeling of the wood… the smell of the wood chips as I gouged out the image… the idea of cutting and immediately creating shapes and images almost magically was terrifically exciting.

Beginning in 1952, Walter Feldman quickly found his voice in woodcut. He began submitting prints juried exhibitions across the country, and within just a few years he was being selected for major museum print shows—more than twenty-three in all. One of the clearest signs of his rising stature was his selection into the Museum of Modern Art’s 1954 exhibition Young American Printmakers. Feldman’s woodcut The Prayer was included—powerful evidence that, very early in his career, he had already achieved national recognition as a printmaker.

Discover the range of woodcuts Feldman created throughout his lifetime from 1950 - 2017,

Special Exhibit Masada Series

Masada Print Series Frontispiece by Walter Feldman

“The Masada stronghold in the Judean desert overlooks the Dead Sea and was once the palace of King Herod the Great. The events of its destruction were recorded by Flavius Josephus as one of the most dramatic episodes in human history.

Nine hundred and sixty Zealots in 73 A.D., three years after the destruction of the temple in Jerusulem, killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans.

Ekezar, the comander, speaking to his men and their families as the Romans prepared for the final onslaught, speaks to us all…death is preferable to slavery.

In 73 A.D. on the summit of the huge, wing-swept rock, an enduring monument was created to FREEDOM.”

1969 Masada Print Series

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