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Latin American must--with the poems of Pablo Neruda, but also because he had met Neruda, and most significantly because his own work was so like Neruda's that it might represent a visual parallel to Neruda's words: it has the same sort of surprising and playful juxtapositions, the same lyricism, and the same very personal symbolism. Ojeda, moreover, was an artist uncommonly sensitive to language, and he expressed his love of poetry by turning favorite poems into works of visual art, carving them word by word and verse by verse, adding illustrations and decorative or narrative borders. The poems that resulted are relief-cut versions of calligraphy, beautiful both as literature and as art. The hand-cutting of the words results in a pattern of printed words on a page, and it slows the reader, allowing a pause for the words and their resonances to take effect.

The representative prints in the Washington Printmakers Gallery are characterized by exquisite balance of compositional elements; by the use of large, simple, silhouette-like shapes; by striking colors set against black (or complementary) areas; by the incorporation of the structure of the surface of the wood or of found objects into the composition; by an enthusiastic and inventive use of cliche (notice, for instance, that images of the sun appear in the majority of these prints, and always in a fairly standardized rendering, yet seldom twice in the same form); and not least, by the suggestion of a narrative that lies just beyond our apprehension. In Fruits of Their Labors, for example, the central half-circle of rich red--a slice of watermelon--serves as the bridge between the blue-green and black foliage of the lower register, and a man, with a singing black bird atop his hat, in the upper region--and, floating above them all, a little smiling sun. Here the balance of bright red against the somber black-green of the lower part of the print, and the cheerful triangle of shoulders, face, bird, and sun, above, provide a visual experience that lies beyond interpretation, perhaps beyond the need for interpretation, and is quintessentially Ojedan.

Naúl Ojeda was one of the foremost woodcut artists of this time. Much of his life was lived far from his native land, and the longing that suffuses his work speaks to us all. One senses, admiring these prints, the wistfulness of one who has left precious things behind. What he has done for us is to preserve those things through his work--and not those things only, but the longing and the laughter and the sorrow that inheres in them.

Naúl Ojeda: Woodcuts and Linocuts will open at the Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1732 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20009, on 30 December, and run through 25 January 2004. There will be two receptions: the first on Friday 2 January from 5:00 to 8:00 pm; the second on Sunday 11 January from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. There will also be a Gallery Talk on Thursday 8 January at 12:00 noon. The Gallery is open Tuesday through Thursday 13:00 to 6:00 pm, Friday 12:00 to 9:00