Yunkers, Adja. COMPOSITION. Brooklyn Museum 80. Color Woodcut, 1955. 20 3/4 x 13 3/8 inches, 527 x 340 mm. Edition of 200 published by International Graphic Arts Society (IGAS). Titled, numbered and signed in pencil. In excellent condition. Adja Yunkers (American, born Latvia, 1900-1983). Yunkers spent his early years as an artist in Germany, where he was influenced Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, the German Expressionists, and Emil Nolde. He traveled to Cuba and Mexico, and moved to Sweden in 1939. He was influenced by Picasso and the Surrealists He moved to New York in 1947, where he taught at the New School, joined a lively coterie of European avant-garde artists, and, through Louis Schanker, met other innovative woodcut artists. Both in New York and in New Mexico, where he set up a workshop, Rio Grande Graphics, Yunkers produced numerous monotypes and color woodcuts of great complexity and increasing scale, built up with layers of opaque and translucent inks, each block carrying more than one color. Sometimes he used nontraditional tools on the block, such as a wire-brush, to create texture. He did not print uniform editions, but inked and printed the blocks differently each time, occasionally even modifying the blocks during printing. (From NYPL biographical materials).
