“I want a mechanical image in my prints … Woodcuts resist that. I like the way you have to fight against the block to get the image that you want.”
—Roy Lichtenstein 

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Roy Lichtenstein first gained inspiration for the Expressionist Woodcut series from a 1978 visit to the Robert Gore Rifkind Collection of German Expressionist Art in Los Angeles, where he discussed printmaking with the collector at length. Inspired by Rifkind’s portraits, Lichtenstein went on to create seven woodcuts of his own at the Gemini G.E.L. artists workshop, picturing men, women, and couples in the blocky style made famous by Die Brücke artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein.

In Reclining Nude, Roy Lichtenstein returns to one of his favorite subjects, this time cutting the human figure into angular shapes that emphasize hard lines and tonal contrasts. Printed from tough Baltic Birch wood, Lichtenstein chose to carve across the grain to minimize the appearance of wood texture in the final print. Lichtenstein’s trademark Ben-Day dots are notably absent from this series, their effect far too Impressionistic to adapt to woodcut. Instead, Lichtenstein employs straight lines to create the effect of shadow, referencing a mechanized version of the German Expressionists’ shading. Reclining Nude also employs embossment, both from the key block and a felt blanket, to reassert depth into a conspicuously flattened composition.

Lichtenstein, with his considerable talent for appropriation, constantly pulled inspiration from art historical movements; in various series from this period, Lichtenstein riffed on Cubism, Surrealism, Impressionism, and Indigenous patterning. In whatever tradition he was commenting on, Lichtenstein was always sure to preserve and adapt his iconic graphic sensibility to each composition. “‘Artists have often converted the work of other artists into their own style,” he pointed out in a 1995 lecture. In Lichtenstein’s capable hands, the work of the Modern masters “is converted to my pseudo-cartoon style and takes on a character of its own.”ⁱⁱ

ⁱ Deborah C. Phillips, “Looking for Relief? Woodcuts Are Back.” in ARTnews, April 1982, p. 92.

ⁱⁱ Roy Lichtenstein, “A Review of My Work Since 1961 – A Slide Presentation,” in Roy Lichtenstein, ed. Graham Baker, 2009, p. 61.