The Kings On Earth

Bernard Reder

This print is a proof from a series of thirty-seven woodcuts titled "The Story of Noah", which included this images titled "The Kings of the Earth". 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.

In this woodcut Reder illustrates the verse from Revelation 6.15. "And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”: