Kent working on printing block, 1931 |
At the urging of a young admirer
named Carl Zigrosser, who would become an authority on printmaking, Kent
began to pursue the art of wood engraving, a passion that would rival his great
love for oil painting.
Kent’s engravings began as rough, reverse images he drew and then traced
onto blocks of maple. He would then cut all of the fine detail into the wood.
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“Engraving, in my hands, became wonderfully consistent with the eccentricities
of my own nature: with my inability to distinguish what are
termed the ‘finer shades’; my preference for fair over foggy days; for clean
sharp lines; for clear perception versus mystical imaginings; for stark,
uncompromising realism versus unreality. You’ve got to know your mind
to work with steel on wood.”
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Kent was equally adept at lithographs. Printmaking, he felt, was a “democratic
art.” In 1927, in his introduction to Fifty Prints, he wrote:
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While the low cost of prints puts them within reach of everyone, it should
be realized that all prints, as the term is used in art, are “originals” in the
same precious sense as a unique painting or drawing; and by the variety
of their processes they offer the artist adequate means for the expression
of his thought.
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Kent used lithography as his primary artistic means for expressing his political
views, and for documenting many of his experiences in Greenland.
Wood engraving was reserved largely for his symbolic representations of man
coming to grips with his earthbound destiny. These striking black and white
images were often interpreted as “mystical,” a term that caused Kent some
concern. In his second autobiography, It’s Me O Lord, he wrote:
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I believe in Man as the supreme
consciousness; and in the arts
as the supreme expression of
his spirit...Symbolism is quite
different from mysticism.
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Kent and Carl Zigrosser, c.1935 |
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 | Washington Press, R. Hoe & Co., New York: Kent's Hand Press, c.1900
steel
Gift of Sally Kent Gorton
[X1978.5.212] |
 | Lone Cabin (Old Barn), 1926
lithograph
Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton
[P52000.9.37] |
 | Precipice, 1927
wood engraving
Gift of Sally Kent Gorton
[X1978.2.41] |
 | Flower, Sun, and Waterfall, 1927
woodblock
Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton
[P52000.133.13] |
 | Flower, Sun, and Waterfall, c.1927
wood engraving
Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton
[P52000.9.69] |
 | Pinnacle, 1928
lithograph
Gifted in Memory of Armand Singer
[P122007.3.3] |
 | The Tree, 1928
lithograph
Museum Purchase, Sally Kent Gorton Endowment
[P102007.1] |
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