Ritual

Jerome Eugene Kaplan

In 1962, printmaker Jerome Eugene Kaplan was awarded a scholarship to attend the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, which at the time was still in its beginnings in Los Angeles. Having already established himself as a printmaker in Pennsylvania, he was nevertheless focused on smaller imagery in etching and woodblock, in addition to limited lithographs. His time at Tamarind allowed him to experiment with much larger stone matrices than he had previously worked with, allowing for more expressive and colorful work.

“Ritual” is one of the lithographs he created at Tamarind and marks a change in his composition: fully engaging the entire sheet, using explosive line and color, and focusing on the energy of the piece rather than the technicality. It also marks the beginning of his shift toward the less representational and into the fully abstract. An impression of “Ritual” can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago, reference number 1963.1534.