The flat printing process of lithography, which the artist first encountered during his studies, was a truly appropriate medium for addressing the many inward and outward problems with which he busied himself in the difficult post-war period. In contrast to the stern, physically strenuous and inflexible woodcut medium, which, in these early years, Habdank already thought likely to be his primary means of expression, the lithograph offered him almost unlimited possibilities and carte blanche for fantasy and experimentation.

His lithographs range stylistically from realistic pictures to timeless metaphorical representations, expressing motion or stationary qualities and previewing later woodcuts. In terms of content, there is wide variety: Concerns regarding identity (self-portraits); early reactions to recent years of dictatorship and war; poetic southern landscapes as allegorical expressions of hope in dark times; and first interpretations of biblical themes and historical Christian figures. In almost all of the lithographs, an overall melancholic mood predominates as evidence of the artist’s ongoing experience of existential insecurity.

The style that Habdank developed in his lithographs was later perfected in his woodcuts.

 

 

Picturs