Adja Yunkers was born in Riga, Latvia, and grew up in St. Petersburg. After travelling widely in Latin America and Europe he emigrated to the USA in 1947. He became an important Abstract Expressionist practicing both painting and printmaking. During the 1950s he established a reputation as one of America’s foremost practitioners in woodcut. His woodcuts were typically large and painterly in expression, as can be seen in this image.

Ostia Antica is the ancient harbour at the mouth of the river Tiber (the Latin word for ‘mouth’ is ‘ostia’), originally a harbour for Rome, but the shoreline silted up over time and the town is now at least three kilometres from the beach. Yunkers made a series of woodcuts inspired by the place. In an interview for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in 1969, he described it as a ghost town, adding “still today there are inlaid symbols the size of this carpet where they had their stalls, in the fishermen’s there were little fishes, in the shoemaker’s there were shoes. Beautiful things that you walk on, and it’s absolutely empty” . The colours and composition of this image suggest deep dark water with sudden pools of light or maybe these ‘inlaid symbols’.