Tyger Tyger

Martin Barooshian

This colorful and whimsical color woodcut by Martin Barooshian, done in 1959, shows the influence of the Surrealists and his personal interest in the work of Arshile Gorky and William Blake. In 1956, Barooshian was in Paris, where he studied printmaking at Atelier 17 with S.W. Hayter.

"Tyger, Tyger" was a subject Barooshian returned to over and over, in different media. He explored his responses to William Blake's 1794 poem of the same title, the first verse of which reads:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?