Bunker | Landscape

George Bunker, Landscape

Keywords: Ancient, Perspective

George Bunker (American, 1923-1991)

Landscape (1973)

Lithograph, 21 ¾ x 30”

Gift of the George R. Bunker Living Trust, 1995.10.7

Though his work is abstract, Bunker’s main subject is landscape. He worked primarily in France, Maine, and the American Southwest. As Ruth E. Fine has observed, he “drew sustenance from [his] surroundings, selecting from them to translate the visible world into sensuous visual terms.”

This print dates to Bunker’s first year living in the Southwest.

Layered Earth

Earth-tone colors are arranged in layers. For the first third of earth history, Earth had only the browns and blues. For the next third, it added reds and yellows, but no greens. Only in the last ten percent of its history did the earth possess green landscapes. Setting color aside, gravity is the great leveler, making Earth a layered planet from the uppermost veil of gas known as the atmosphere to the deepest, densest, solid iron core. Rock in the foreground is denser than the background sky. The serrated middle ground suggests tilted strata leveled flat by time.