Buffalo Harbor 1950

Carlo Antonia Nisita made this lino-cut print of Buffalo Harbor sometime in the mid-twentieth century. The medium is black and white, but look how the artist used a multitude of tiny marks to render light and dark and suggest a scene. I bet Nisita stood on the edge of the harbor and looked out across the water, feeling the scale of the ships and buildings looming in the distance. He wasn't after realism, though. He was after something more like how the scene felt. He would have looked, and looked, and looked again, translating all that visual information into something he could carve. I like to think he enjoyed that process of reduction and distillation. See how the bridge or overpass looms above the scene, casting the foreground in shadow? It reminds me that artists are always having a conversation with each other. Nisita might have seen prints by the German Expressionists, who were masters of black and white. Nisita's vision may feel unique, but he also belongs to a long history of artists trying to capture the world through art.