Many prints of those early days have been destroyed, but some are preserved and bear witness to my desperate attempt to get out of the blind alley. One of these prints is Billboards. It was one woodcut version of numerous oil paintings on the same theme. Most of these paintings were destroyed or for economic reasons, painted over. I had never shown the woodcut Billboards. I doubt that I printed a single proof. Now, after many years, it is appropriate to show Billboards as one of the many different and distant roads I traveled.
My purpose then was not the refinement of the woodcutting technique, just the opposite. I tried to make my prints deliberately rough and irregular. Before, for my woodcuts, I needed the smooth surface of pear wood. Now the same fine woodblock was not only unnecessary, but was a hindrance to my purposes.
My purpose then was not the refinement of the woodcutting technique, just the opposite. I tried to make my prints deliberately rough and irregular. Before, for my woodcuts, I needed the smooth surface of pear wood. Now the same fine woodblock was not only unnecessary, but was a hindrance to my purposes.
On my stretched canvases and on my woodblocks I saw hundreds of paths, and I didn't know which one to take.
After several years of hopeless work, I began to find my way. I found it in my own room, in my corridor, on my sidewalk, and in the blade of grass growing between two blocks of concrete in front of the house I lived in. Everywhere I went, things became clearer and more visible to me. I had an insurmountable desire to paint it all. No longer was I concerned how to paint. The question of how, which for years was so important to me, suddenly became secondary.
At that time I was not working on any woodcuts. I was busy with my paintings, which, to my surprise even began to sell. But I knew that as with my paintings, I would soon find my way with my woodcuts.
Although I made radical attempts to break away from my former habits in printmaking, I was still not completely liberated. Despite the highly simplified and almost abstract pattern-like approach of my new experiments, I was still a slave to the frame. My prints still had to have a border even if I constantly asked why.
In 1958, fourteen years after my first woodcut, I did Fir Trees. Later I cut another, larger and more elongated version of the same subject. The border was such a part of me at that time, that I found justification to leave out only two shorter horizontal bars. Only by 1960 did I have the courage to eliminate the border completely. Since then most of my woodcuts have been without borders. Now I put a border on a woodcut not from habit, but only when there is some justification for it.
Although I made radical attempts to break away from my former habits in printmaking, I was still not completely liberated. Despite the highly simplified and almost abstract pattern-like approach of my new experiments, I was still a slave to the frame. My prints still had to have a border even if I constantly asked why.
In 1958, fourteen years after my first woodcut, I did Fir Trees. Later I cut another, larger and more elongated version of the same subject. The border was such a part of me at that time, that I found justification to leave out only two shorter horizontal bars. Only by 1960 did I have the courage to eliminate the border completely. Since then most of my woodcuts have been without borders. Now I put a border on a woodcut not from habit, but only when there is some justification for it.
