New Art Examiner
April, 1981
Highland Park Public Library

Claire Wolf Krantz
by Doryce L. Maher

Art books are unique, and they are not easy to display. Their size and delicacy demand special exhibition space as well as security. In many cases, they are an intimate form of artistic expression, and a pleasant rapprochement develops as you view them. We want to touch them or examine their pages. A library is an appropriate setting, and this one, which as an affinity for artists and space, made a congenial environment for Claire Wolf Krantz's monoprints and art books.

Although monoprints have been around for at least 350 years, there has been a recent surge of interest in them by artists, collectors, and critics. Monoprints are singular artworks made by transferring an image from one surface to another. Krantz uses a press, and her individual pieces show the correlating links between painting, drawing, and printing that makes the monoprint incomparable. As each is a handmade original, unlike the identical duplicates in other printing media, the process frequently is considered not a graphic medium. However, the fact remains that it offers freedom and spontaneity that are exciting to artists, and many artists love to explore its possibilities.

The books and pints on display convey the artist's interest in sequential imagery involving landscapes. They are conceived by integrating etchings, monoprints, and combinations of both, as well as frequently adding photographic collaged elements. The colors are fresh and luscious. In the black-and-white book, the viewer sees the underlying structure in the spaces, as it rests beneath the color in the other books. The line work is highly expressionistic, but the general aura remains a joyful one. I especially liked her accordion-fold books, of which the pages could be viewed individually or opened as a complete panorama, and a four-part hanging print in which the image appeared to disintegrate slowly from stage one to four.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.