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What You Need to Know: On view through March 23, 2024, Oslo-based Galleri K is presenting the solo exhibition “Franz Gertsch: Selected Woodcuts.” Featuring examples of the artist’s monumental, monochromatic portraits and vignettes from the natural world, the show includes examples from across several decades of Gertsch’s career, highlighting the development of his signature technique and approach.
Part of the allure of Gertsch prints is that, although he created series from the same woodcut, he maintained each piece’s uniqueness through the use of a new hue in the printing process. The exhibition at Galleri K offers the opportunity to view a diverse array of subject matter and color schemes from his inimitable body of work.
About the Artist: Swiss painter and graphic artist Franz Gertsch (1930–2022) is most well known for his large-scale, photorealistic portraits and nature studies. Originally from Mörigen, Switzerland, he undertook formal training in Bern with artists Max von Mühlenen and Hans Schwarzenback. Although his early career was largely dedicated to painting, his practice evolved with his development of a new woodcut technique, which allowed him to achieve his preferred realism while experimenting with unrealistic color.
The first of his woodcuts were shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1990. Over the course of his career, his work—both paintings and woodcuts—have been included in such prestigious exhibitions as Documenta 5 in 1972 and the Venice Biennale in 1999, and is held in collections worldwide. He also has an eponymous museum, located in Burgdorf, Switzerland, which honors and preserves his work and practice.
Why We Like It: Drawing from his own photographic archive, Gertsch’s woodcut compositions are imbued with a sense of the personal. Carefully selected images coupled with the artist’s own color sensibilities gives each work the impression that the viewer is catching a glimpse into Gertsch’s mind and creative vision. Though hyper-realistic in the depiction of space, the employment of color is anything but—yet each work still manages to form a harmony with the image.
Speaking of the choice in color the artist once described, “…the coloring always derives from a vision you have the evening before or often the morning of a day spent printing and it fits the subject of the respective woodcut.” Within the present exhibition, seeing single iterations of an array of Gertsch’s prints allows viewers to contemplate the trajectory he took when creating the series, and what the viewer themselves can draw from the choices made.
See inside the exhibition and featured works below.
Franz Gertsch, Bromelia (2015). Courtesy of Galleri K, Oslo.
Installation view of “Franz Gertsch: Selected Woodcuts” (2024). Courtesy of Galleri K, Oslo.
Franz Hertsch, Natascha II (1986). Courtesy of Galleri K, Oslo.
Installation view of “Franz Gertsch: Selected Woodcuts” (2024). Courtesy of Galleri K, Oslo.
Installation view of “Franz Gertsch: Selected Woodcuts” (2024). Courtesy of Galleri K, Oslo.
“Franz Gertsch: Selected Woodcuts” is on view at Galleri K, Oslo, through March 23, 2024.