Hovey Harper collection of Leonard Baskin ephemera

Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of a rabbi, Baskin studied at the New York University School of Architecture and Applied Arts from 1939 to 1941. In 1941, he won a scholarship to Yale where he studied for two years. Baskin served in the US Navy during the final years of World War Two, and then in the Merchant Navy. He then studied at The New School for Social Research, where he obtained his B.A. in 1949. From 1953 until 1974, Baskin taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College, and continued to live in Northampton, MA until his death in 2000. His first major solo exhibition was at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston in 1956. Today, his works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums.