Rooms

"These blocks were cut by Rick Barton during 1958."
"60 copies printed by Henry Evans at the Peregrine Press during June of 1960."
Little is known about Barton, who was an influential figure among a small coterie of artists in San Francisco in the 1950s and 60s. Raised in New York City, he may have received some formal art training, but he was also a voracious autodidact. Influenced by the primacy of the line in Chinese painting, which he may have encountered on a visit to China in the 1940s while serving in the Navy, he worked primarily in pen or brush and ink. He often drew in coffee shops, such as Foster's Cafeteria beneath the Wentley Hotel, using a yatate, an antique Japanese implement incorporating a portable inkpot and a small brush. He filled sheets and accordion-fold books with figures, buildings, and interiors rendered in his characteristic linear style. This is one of a number of portfolios of linoleum block prints by Barton that was printed by Henry Evans at San Francisco's Peregrine Press. He cut the blocks in 1958 and they were printed in 1960. Although devoid of figures, save his own feet visible in one of the plates, the domestic and sacred spaces he depicts are animated by the objects they house. Defying rules of perspective established during the Renaissance, these vertiginous compositions offer insights into the unique vision of this enigmatic artist.