| (excerpt from an article
by Art Hazelwood)
William Wolff is an anomaly. In an age of revolving
art fashions he has shown an allegiance to a modernist tradition
in both theme and style. He has lived his entire life in San Francisco
and has always been engaged in the Bay Area art world, through his
association with seminal Bay Area figurative painters, as well as
through his connection with printmaking organizations. But despite
these associations he has remained apart from the general direction
of this art world. At a time of decreasing interest in artistic
tradition he stuck to a belief in the importance of subject matter
as well as to a stylistic approach that draws its inspiration from
the modernist artists of the first half of the twentieth century.
His work was never engulfed by the tidal wave of art movements during
the period of his greatest activity, from 1950 to 2000, and he has
continued to nurture the artistic traditions in which literary knowledge
provides the subject matter and themes for visual art. Biblical
imagery, Commedia dell' Arte characters, classical and Shakespearean
motifs, inspirations from poets and writers such as Antonio Machado.
John Steinbeck, Rafael Alberti and portraits of authors (including
Antonin Artaud, Wilfrid Owen, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti) constitute
some of the references in his work. These references and others
show his allegiance to a cultural history that is steeped in literature.
With his introduction to printmaking in 1960, a new
direction opened for Wolff. Printmaking was the medium that allowed
the full content of Wolff's expression to flower. Perhaps it was
the relative speed of printmaking, or its more modest scale compared
with his paintings that immediately appealed to Wolff. Wolff began
with woodcut, and has focused on it throughout his career, though
later he also took up etching, silk-screen and lithography. With
printmaking, Wolff found a medium that allowed for expressive line
work and a graphic boldness that could express both his themes and
his rough modernist style.
In pursuing prints to the gradual exclusion of painting, Wolff developed
and broadened his themes and vocabulary. The maturity of his style
dates from about 1968, when he is confident in his technique and
is working for a time in several print media.
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