One of the Seven Plagues (The Third Plague)

Bernard Reder

This print is a proof from a series of thirty-seven woodcuts titled "The Story of Noah", which included three images titled One of the Seven Plagues. The New York Public Library wrote about this series for the 2005-6 exhibition "Prints Without Pressure" commented about Reder and this series:

(In 1945)..."after a serious illness left him partially paralyzed, Reder began to focus on drawings and woodcuts, frequently depicting biblical themes alongside more cryptic images that sprang from his own imagination. He carefully inked and printed his woodcuts himself, and although he printed standard editions, he often pulled only single impressions of his prints.

Reder’s experience as a sculptor is clearly manifest in this series of woodcuts. He treats the woodblock aggressively as a three-dimensional object, rather than simply a matrix for a two-tone image. By essentially sculpting the block to varying degrees of relief, often using improvised tools, he obtains printed textures and mid-tones not common to this medium. His choice of a biblical subject, a frequent theme throughout his oeuvre, affords him ample opportunity to demonstrate his profound knowledge of the human figure.

This woodcut Reder illustrates the third "bowl" or plague, from Revelation 16. "The waters turn to blood. Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying:

You are righteous, oh Lord, the one who is and who was and who is to be, because you have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. For 'it is their just due.' "And I heard another from the altar saying, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgements.”