In addition to being a painter most of his life Lawrence Ferlinghetti was always drawing, or said another way, never not drawing. On this page are some of his works on paper. The work spans decades and has recurring themes and subject matter—a figure alone, figures intertwined in dory-like boats, figures adrift in various ways.
Some of these pieces were included in a volume called Life Studies, Life Stories: 80 Works on Paper, published by City Lights in 2003, in collaboration with George Krevsky Gallery. There was an exhibit by the same name in 2004 at George Krevsky Gallery. The volume and the exhibit include “drawings in black and white, and in color, mostly nudes in love or strife, some ‘disastered by life,’ some with incisive or caustic words integrated in the images.”
In the book’s forward Ferlinghetti writes, “As a painter, I have always been more interested in the life stories of models than in their physical appearance, and these drawings are all attempts to at least scratch the surface of the human facade....Whether or not such a thing is at all possible in drawing from life, I hope my empathy for the subjects does shine through in these studies on paper chosen from more than 1,500 done over the years at various locations from the San Francisco Art Institute’s open studios to my studio, in the Hunters Point Shipyard, San Francisco.”
