The young Dominique looks at us from this monumental woodcut measuring almost two and a half meters in height and bathed in a warm yellow-orange. Despite the imposing size, her contours are soft, her gaze gentle, and her hair caresses her face in an airy manner. Features that create an enigmatic mood and set a counterpoint to the mere physical size of her appearance. With “Dominique” (1988), Franz Gertsch created a particularly striking woodcut portrait, which, in addition to its aesthetic impact, is also impressive for the elaborate production process and the use of high-quality materials. The countless small, grid-like structures the artist painstakingly cuts out of the wooden block using different gouges emerge in close-up. Most of his motifs are based on photographs. In this case, a picture of the 25-year-old teacher Dominique Sonnen served as the template. Subsequently, the artist mixes special pigment powders to create colors he uses to print on high-quality, hand-made Japanese paper made from mulberry and linen fibers by Heizaburo Iwano. In his home country, Iwano bears the honorary title “National Treasure”. The elaborate manual printing process generally only allows one copy to be printed daily, which explains the low print run of just 18 copies. Due to the individual coloring, each copy takes on a unique character. Gertsch has been creating woodcuts independently of his paintings since 1986. He has opened up entirely new dimensions for this traditional medium with a hitherto unknown precision of execution – in both engraving and printing – and in monumental formats that push the boundaries of papermaking. [AR]