AIX

Karl Kasten

An impression of "AIX" is illustrated in David Acton's important 2001 catalogue "The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints" on page 191. On page 190 Acton comments:

"[AIX] typifies Kasten's Abstract Expressionist intaglios of the 1950s, which derive in their style from the teaching of Hans Hofmann, and in their technique, ultimately, from Atelier 17. At that time Kasten drew gestural drypoints on copper plates with steel needles and photoengraving roulettes, and he adapted soft-ground etching and aquatint for painterly color intaglios...." and further:

"This print is one from a series of intaglios, begun in 1959, named for locations in France where Kasten often spent his summers. Its title refers to Aix-en-Provence, the city where Paul Cezanne lived and worked. Cézanne obsessively painted the Provencal landscape, simplifying and geometrizing its elements in order to capture the sense of space and the distinctive qualities of light as they shifted and changed with the seasons and throoughout each day....Cézanne's work encouraged the artist to develop a style and imagery derived from landscape, based on dense, activated space."

Karl Kasten was born in San Francisco on 5 March 1916. After graduating as valedictorian from Marin College in 1936, he enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley where he received his M.A. in 1939. Postgraduate work included studying with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa in 1949 and with Hans Hofmann at the Hans Hofmann School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1951.

Kasten’s distinguished teaching career began in 1941 with his appointment to the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts. This career was briefly put on hold during the Second World War while he served in the Army as a member of the Corps of Engineers. In 1946, he left California for a brief appointment to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but after two Michigan winters, Kasten returned to the Bay Area in 1947. Joining the faculty of San Francisco State University, his drive and commitment to printmaking led him to plan the university's printmaking studio.

His influential career at the University of California Berkeley began in 1950 with an invitation from Worth Ryder to join the faculty. Kasten was an early proponent of Abstract Expressionism in the Bay Area. He was a charter member of the Bay Printmakers Society and the first president of the newly formed California Society of Printmakers in 1968. It was during the 1960s that Kasten expanded the possibilities of printmaking by developing matrixes, which consisted of vacuum-formed plastic plates with insertable parts and, in 1977, he designed the lightweight K-B etching press.