Robert Adams: The Plains, from Memory

Using wood and paint, Adams evokes the Colorado prairie.

Untitled, 2020
wood, 5-1/2 x 11-3/4 x 3/4 inches [13.9 x 29.8 x 1.9 cm]
Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 6-1/2 x 6-1/4 x 1/2 inches [16.5 x 15.8 x 1.2 cm]

Sea Stone & Other Pictures features a selection of painted woodblocks made by Robert Adams during the tumultuous spring of 2020, exhibited alongside the artist’s photographic views of the prairie. The simplified compositions draw on the stillness and grandeur that Adams remembers from his time spent on the Colorado prairie. A catalogue of these works, Robert Adams: The Plains, from Memory, will be published by Steidl this spring.

The Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, ca. 1984
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]
Untitled, 2020
ink of wood, 16-3/4 x 16-1/4 x 3/4 inches [42.5 x 41.2 x 1.9 cm]
Weld County, Colorado, 1987
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

Modest in size and often painted in springlike hues with block-printing ink, the wooden works are made from the scraps of an old brick and board bookcase, and cut with simple handsaws.

Robert Adams’s workshop in his Oregon home.
Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 8-3/4 x 8-1/4 x 3/4 inches [22.2 x 20.9 x 1.9 cm]
South of Burns, Oregon, 1999
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 13-5/8 x 6-3/4 x 3/4 inches [34.6 x 17.1 x 1.9 cm]
Near Peyton, Colorado, 1968
gelatin silver print, 10 x 8 inches (sheet) [25.4 x 20.3 cm]
Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 17-1/4 x 11-1/4 x 3/4 inches [43.8 x 28.5 x 1.9 cm]

Works on View

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