TitleThe Wave
Artist
Richard Bosman
(American, b. 1944)
Date1987
MediumColor woodcut on white Suzuki paper
DimensionsSheet size: 30 1/8 × 38 5/16 in.
Image size: 29 15/16 × 38 1/4 in.
Other (Backing board): 32 × 40 in.
EditionA.P. 4/5
SignedSigned in graphite at BR: "Bosman".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, April 26, 1995
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1995.5
Label TextPainter and printmaker Richard Bosman was born in Madras, India and was raised in Egypt and Australia. He studied art at the Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing, London from 1964 to 1969 and immigrated to the United States, continuing his studies at the New York Studio School from 1969 to 1971. Bosman emerged in the early 1980s as part of a larger post-war artistic movement that was representational in style, drew on appropriation imagery, and has been identified as so-called new expressionism or figurative expressionism. The artist often employs a stop-frame method of working, similar to that of comic illustration and film techniques and his work has been compared to a variety of trans-generational artists from Alex Katz (with whom the artist studied at the New York Studio School) to Dana Schutz.Bosman began working with the woodcut print medium in 1980 and had very few contemporary sources upon which to draw. The artist has stated that he enjoys both the subtractive qualities of making a woodblock print (by carving away the block) and the collaborative aspect of the actual printing process by working with a printer. This particular print was fairly complex to create as it entailed the carving of six woodblocks, which must be printed sequentially, and the use of ten ink colors. Bosman's paintings and prints have been noted for their depiction of a climactic or dramatic moment in some mysterious narrative. "The Wave" is no exception as a large catastrophic wave envelops two helpless figures.
