A coincidence of "woodcuts"

Mere days after seeing a work by Gerhard Richter that uses lino printing ink as a "drawing" medium, I've come across the woodcut "paintings" of twin artists Gert & Uwe Tobias.

Richter made the work in 1957 and left them in the safekeeping of a friend in the GDR. When he saw the 31 monoprints again, almost 30 years later, he gave them the title "Elbe", the name of the river that runs through Dresden. They are the result of Richter's experiments with an ink roller during a printing course ... they look like abstracted landscapes, and some are almost entirely black, more like a night sky. See the entire set here, and a video here.

The works by the Tobias brothers are in the current show at the Saatchi Gallery. The large "paintings" are made with shaped wood blocks printed in coloured ink onto paper that is then glued to canvas. In following up the images that appealed to me, I found this poster they made for a recent show in Berlin - the black prints in the middle of the circle are coincidentally like those Elbe pieces.