Baskin's woodcut "Betrayal," complete in 1969, depicts a pregnant Vietnamese woman. The piece is a direct comment on the Vietnam war and the geopolitics surrounding it.

Very early in his career, Baskin came to the conclusion that sculpture was the medium best suited to expressing fundamental human states such as grief, love, hope, and dignity. Its very monumentality makes it an art of witness, not ideology. For expression of a more direct political nature, in the late 40’s Baskin turned to printmaking, the perfect medium for a young man with Communist sympathies. Prints were cheap, easily distributed, and their message could be plain. Text might even be cut directly into the block as was done with many of Baskin’s earliest works

With its intricate network of sinewy anatomical lines, delicate and twisted, Baskin found in wood engraving a way to depict both the inner maelstrom and the outer physicality of the human form at once. As his command of the medium grew, Baskin allowed his line to speak for itself, but he has never abandoned his political commitment. “Art,” he has said, “is content, or it is nothing.” The artist must be committed to making a statement. “Photorealism is the same thing as minimal abstraction. Both are unwilling to say anything about the nature of reality, about their own involvement with reality...” Baskin is nothing if not willing to offer his own opinions.

Baskin almost single-handedly revived the Monumental sized woodcut as an art form, but he was also comfortable working on a miniature scale. He mastered the techniques of lithography, engraving, color block prints and monotypes. The range of his print work over a fifty-year career is truly astounding. 

Baskin was one of the universal artists of the twentieth century. He was a sculptor of renown. Reared in New York, Baskin was educated at a yeshiva before going on to Yale. In 1953 he began teaching printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he remained until 1974. He was a writer and illustrator of books ranging from the Bible to children's stories and natural history. He was a talented water-colorist and a superb, prolific printmaker. His prints ranged from woodcuts through lithography and etching; his subjects covered portraits, flower studies, biblical, classical, and mythological scenes. Baskin's sculpture, watercolors, and prints are in the permanent collections of most of the world's major art galleries and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Vatican Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Tate Gallery in London. Among Baskin's many commissions are a bas relief he made for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial statue erected on the site of the first Jewish cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Baskin won many awards including the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the Special Medal of Merit of the American Institue of graphic Arts, and the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design.