Etching, 1974

Edition : 12/100

Publisher : Galerie de France (Paris)

Printer : Lacourière-Frélaut (Paris)

Catalog : [BNF 29]

53.00 cm. x 76.00 cm. | 20.87 in. x 29.92 in. (paper)

35.00 cm. x 69.00 cm. | 13.78 in. x 27.17 in. (image)

Arches vellum

This etching by Pierre Soulages is one of ten the artist produced that year, and one of only a handful of etchings among a total of only forty or so. In 1951, when Madeleine Lacourière came to meet him and invited him to work in the famous studio she ran with her husband, the engraver Roger Lacourière, Soulages gradually made the medium his own, extracting all its potential in his own way.

This work bears witness to Soulages' familiarity with the medium, as well as to his close relationship with the material, which he experiences through the acceptance of chance. The freedom he gives to the contingencies of the copper transformation process enables him to go beyond the rectangular framework imposed by the plate, to perforate it and vary its contours: "Acid also invented. There was the line that came from what I had wanted, and then there was what the acid did that I hadn't necessarily wanted."

From this single plate and a single pass under the press, with a superimposition of ink in the hollows and on the surface, results the unique imprint of the intimacy between man and material, understood in its transmutation by acid, which subtracts and shapes the copper, and in the apposition of ink, which reveals the reliefs and asperities. The work thus takes on its full dimension, made tangible, concrete, almost alive.

Certificate of authenticity
Very good condition
Handsigned by the artist in pencil

Ref : LCD5790