Untitled

Gabriel Kohn

1963

This 1963 lithograph by Gabriel Kohn places three dense, gestural black forms on a cool gray ground as an exploration of translating painterly mark-making into the reserved economy of print and testing the tension between mass and empty space.

You’re struck by the rough, scumbled textures — a long, dark oval across the top, a hatched vertical block at left, and a tiny crudely framed square — that appear almost tactile as they hover against the calm, muted field.

Kohn’s spare abstractions exemplify postwar printmaking’s move to emphasize gesture, texture, and the interplay of positive and negative space, showing how prints could capture the immediacy of drawing and painting.

Palette

Art Terms

Abstraction Lithography Print Gestural Figure/ground relationship Monochrome

Exhibitions

Committed to Print

1988

American Prints from the International Program

1971

Twenty Lithographs: Graphic Art Processes

1941

American Prints: 1913–1963

1974