About the Work

Tasso's Tree XIII is a screenprint created by German-British artist Michael Heindorff in 1971 as part of his 'Tasso's Tree' series, comprising fourteen distinct, brightly colored images depicting an abstract tree in mid-sway.

Heindorff named this series after the 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, whose famous work, 'Jerusalem Delivered,' offers a romanticized and surrealist account of the 1099 battle for Jerusalem during the Crusades. Heindorff drew particular inspiration for these works from a subplot in the poem, where Ismene, a pagan magician and daughter of Oedipus, raises spirits from the underworld to possess and animate the surrounding trees. When the battle's hero, Tancred, later slashes a tree with his knife, he hears the voice of Corinda, the love he mistakenly killed in battle. After being slashed, these trees bleed and dance like human forms.

This depiction of natural elements dominated by mystical forces was a theme Heindorff frequently revisited throughout his career. Further, these works also showcase Heindorff's vibrant color-field painting style, which is particularly suited for the silkscreen technique, whereby heavily pigmented ink is applied separately in stenciled sections. Printed on thick wove paper, these large lithographs come from an edition of 100 and were published together as a suite by the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in 1986.