Events

Leonard Baskin, Sculptor

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) was an American sculptor, printmaker, draftsman, illustrator, and book artist whose work is known for its expression, engagement with history, death, and human suffering. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, and taught at Smith College for many years and worked in a variety of media.

Baskin was one of five sculptors selected by Lawrence Halprin for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC. His contribution, The Funeral Cortege in Room Four, displays the FDR funeral procession and the grief of the American public. Baskin represented the mourning a nation went through because of the emotional connection to Roosevelt––the only president many Americans had known during their adult lives.

Baskin’s work was also the subject of major retrospective exhibitions at institutions which include the Smithsonian, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Library of Congress.

Other notable works of Leonard Baskin include:

  • Holocaust Memorial (1994), Ann Arbor, Michigan — A seven-foot seated bronze figure, installed at the site of the First Jewish Cemetery. With one fist covering the face and one hand lifted upward, the work evokes grief, anger, isolation, and the moral difficulty of representing the Holocaust.
  • Woodrow Wilson Memorial (1997), Washington, D.C. — Baskin created sculptural work for the memorial to the twenty-eighth president, another major Washington commission that joined historical commemoration with his characteristic monumental figural style.
  • Man of Peace (1952) — A major early woodcut that helped establish Baskin’s reputation as a powerful printmaker. Its large, emphatic human form exemplifies his lifelong interest in the solitary figure as a vehicle for moral and emotional expression.
  • Hydrogen Man (1954) — A monumental woodcut responding to the anxieties of the early atomic age. The image uses an enlarged, vulnerable human body to confront the destructive possibilities of modern warfare.
  • Isak (1968), Marabouparken, Sundbyberg, Sweden — A bronze sculpture of the biblical Isaac holding a sheep, drawing on religious imagery while emphasizing the physical weight and emotional gravity of the human figure.