The Strabismic Jew

Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor and printmaker as well as the founder of Gehenna Press, a publisher of fine illustrated books. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Baskin studied at New York University, the New School, Yale University, and abroad in Paris and Florence. Baskin later taught at Smith College and at Hampshire College. The artist’s figurative sculptures feature monumental human forms in wood, stone, and bronze and include a Holocaust memorial erected at the site of the first Jewish cemetery in Michigan, now part of the campus of the University of Michigan. Baskin’s numerous etchings and woodblock prints offer dramatic portraits of humans and animals rendered with the intensity that characterized much of Baskin’s extensive oeuvre.