Erik DESMAZIÈRES

Érik Desmazières (b. 1948) – Biography, Etchings and Original Prints

Érik Desmazières, born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1948, is widely recognised as one of the finest French printmakers of his generation. An etcher in the tradition of Callot, Piranesi, Bresdin and Méryon, he has spent five decades engraving imaginary cities, Babel-like libraries, cabinets of curiosities and the printing workshops of Paris. His etchings and aquatints, now numbering more than 250, are recorded in a multi-volume catalogue raisonné and held by the British Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A member of the Académie des beaux-arts since 2008, he lives and works in Paris.

Le Coin des Arts follows Érik Desmazières’s work closely and offers his original prints as and when they become available, chosen, like every piece we handle, for quality of impression, edition, provenance and condition. To be told when a new work arrives, simply ‘follow the artist’ on this page.

A diplomat’s son turned etcher

The son of a French diplomat, Desmazières grew up between Morocco, Portugal and France. He drew from childhood, yet his first training was academic: having settled in Paris in 1967, he graduated from the Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) in 1971. That same year he turned to art, enrolling in the evening classes of the City of Paris, where he learnt etching under Jean Delpech until 1973. Copper, acid and the press were his schooling, and the craftsman’s discipline acquired there underpins everything that followed.

Fantastic architecture and the Tazé workshop, 1972–1990

Desmazières dates his career as an artist from 1972, showing in group exhibitions from 1973 and alone from 1974, including at Galerie Bernier in Paris. Early plates such as Les Roues (1974) fill the sheet with machines, fortified towns and visionary landscapes drawn with a miniaturist’s precision. At the Leblanc workshop on rue Saint-Jacques he met the intaglio printer René Tazé, and when Tazé opened his own studio at 11 rue Hittorf in the spring of 1978, a partnership began that would last forty years. In 1978 he also won the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris for printmaking and held his first exhibition across the Atlantic, at the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery in New York. He joined the Société des peintres-graveurs français in 1980, the year he illustrated Melville’s Benito Cereno for the Bibliophiles de France. From 1979 the rue Hittorf studio itself, with its presses and proofs hung up to dry, became a recurring subject.

Libraries, Borges and Sir Thomas Browne, 1990–2012

Paris’s covered arcades (Galerie Véro-Dodat, 1989) and crowded interiors (Intérieur à Pressy, 1991) gave way in 1997 to the suite of etchings and aquatints for Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel, first published as a fine-press book in Paris; an English edition followed in 2000. Libraries and books have been his great theme ever since. British readers will recognise a particular affinity with Sir Thomas Browne, the seventeenth-century Norwich physician and writer: Desmazières collaborated with Patrick Mauriès on an edition of Browne’s Musaeum Clausum (Les Presses de Serendip, 2009) and etched The Skull of Sir Thomas Browne (2011) on chine appliqué. In 2012 Thames & Hudson in London published A Cabinet of Rarities, the English edition of his book of imaginary curiosities with Mauriès, Le Miroir des vanités.

Retrospectives in Amsterdam, Paris and beyond

Recognition by museums gathered pace with a retrospective at the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, in 2004, for which he etched a new series of views of the city. The Musée Carnavalet followed with Paris à grands traits (2006–07), then the Musée Jenisch in Vevey (2007), Florence and Pisa (2008–09), Savannah and Montreal (2009–10). Elected president of the Société des peintres-graveurs français in 2006, he took the seat of Jean-Marie Granier in the printmaking section of the Académie des beaux-arts on 9 April 2008 and was formally received on 14 October 2009. From 9 October to 18 November 2012 the Bibliothèque nationale de France showed his prints and drawings of the Labrouste reading room and its stacks, which he likened to a ‘modern Piranesi’. Lille (2014) and the Graphische Sammlung of ETH Zurich (2015) followed. In London, the artist’s exhibition record lists a show at Colnaghi in 2012.

Académie, Marmottan and a forty-year collaboration

Desmazières served as president of the Académie des beaux-arts in 2016. Two years later he etched Atelier René Tazé VIII, the studio shortly before its conversion, and the book Dans l’atelier (5 Continents, 2019) recorded the partnership of 1978 to 2018: more than 200 prints and at least 20,000 impressions. On 7 October 2020 the Académie elected him director of the Musée Marmottan Monet for a five-year term. He has continued to etch, notably L’Atelier Georges Leblanc (2020), a homage to the workshop where it all began.

The etched work and its catalogue

Desmazières works in intaglio: etching for line, aquatint and roulette for tone, with the occasional touch of drypoint. Most plates from 1978 to 2018 were printed by René Tazé. The catalogue raisonné is published by the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery: Etchings 1972–1981 (1982, preface by Lucien Goldschmidt), Etchings 1982–1991 (1992, Robert Flynn Johnson), Etchings 1991–2001 (2002, Maxime Préaud) and Prints 2001–2011 (2011, Tom Rassieur). Museums cite it as ‘FF’ followed by a number: the ten Babel plates at the Cleveland Museum of Art are FF 157–166, an Amsterdam view of 2004 FF 189. In Britain his prints are in the British Museum; the artist’s own list of collections also names the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Collecting Érik Desmazières: a buyer’s guide

Edition. Editions are small, often 60 to 150, sometimes only 30 or 40 for recent plates. See our notes on the printing.

Signature. Impressions are signed in pencil and frequently titled and dated; see the signature.

Catalogue number. Ask for the FF reference and check plate dimensions against it; plates made after 2011 fall outside the four volumes.

Impression. Everything depends on the velvety aquatint blacks and the delicacy of the bitten line; a fine impression keeps its distances legible and its shadows deep.

Paper and margins. Insist on full margins. Some subjects exist in two versions, with and without margins, which should not be mistaken for a trimmed sheet.

Book plates. Plates from illustrated books (Borges, Melville, Browne) also circulate as loose sheets; a good description says so.

Pitfalls. Catalogue reproductions, printed greetings cards and posters are not original etchings. Read our authenticity guarantee and our advice on framing.

We select Desmazières’s etchings alongside those of other masters of intaglio: Johnny Friedlaender, Yozo Hamaguchi, Shoichi Hasegawa, Jacques Villon and, for the visionary strain, Odilon Redon. Explore also contemporary art, our engravings and lithographs and illustrated books.

Sources and further reading

Érik Desmazières: Etchings 1972–1981, 1982–1991, 1991–2001; Prints 2001–2011, Fitch-Febvrel Gallery, 1982–2011 · The Graphic Universe of Érik Desmazières, Hercules Segers Foundation, 2004 · Patrick Mauriès and Érik Desmazières, A Cabinet of Rarities, Thames & Hudson, 2012 · Dans l’atelier, 5 Continents, 2019 · Fitch-Febvrel Gallery – Érik Desmazières · 5 Continents Editions – Dans l’atelier · BnF – Chroniques 64 · Cleveland Museum of Art – The Library of Babel