Mario Avati

Elephant Equilibriste, 1969 Mezzotint by Mario Avati

1969

This drypoint etching was created by American artist Leonard Baskin. Baskin is well known for his somewhat grotesque, intricate, surreal drawings and natural subject matter. This etc...

A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Etudes de Mains et Colombe". The original drawing was completed in 1952. In the 1970's after...

Oiseau Multicolore by Georges Braque, French (1882–1963) Date: 1950 Aquatint Etching, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 69/200 Image Size: 10 x 19.5 inches Size: 17.75 x 25.25...

An original lithograph from the 1956 Derriere le Miroir “Miro-Artigas” folio. Printed by Mourlot, Published by Maeght, Paris. Artist: Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) Title: Zephyr Bird...

A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Deux Pigeons". The original painting was completed in 1960. In the 1970's after Picasso's de...

A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Etudes de Mains et Colombe". The original drawing was completed in 1952. In the 1970's after...

Carol Wax describes her circular images as "most often quasi abstract works that refer to ancient islamic designs using the shapes and attributes of animals, in this case the zebra. ...

In "X-ing"", Anne Dykmans captures an image of solace with a swimming fish . This image is an artist's proof in an edition of 50 Anne Dykmans employs her superb command of engravin...

Carol Wax describes her circular images as "most often quasi abstract works that refer to ancient islamic designs using the shapes and attributes of animals, in this case the elephan...

Leonard Merchant's mezzotint, "Snail in Cup" is inscribed for fellow artist, Fritz Eichenberg. While a student at the Central School for Arts and Crafts in London, a young Leonard Marchant found an engraving rocker in a cupboard and proceeded to turn himself into a master of the painstaking art of mezzotinting. Marchant, who has died in Shrewsbury aged 70, grew up in Simonstown, the Royal Navy's enclave in South Africa. Though his first job was as a parliamentary messenger, he taught himself to paint and, aged 19, was given a one-man show in Cape Town. Fired by this success, he left for England to study painting and, he claimed, to escape the stifling home atmosphere created by his Catholic mother and aunts. (His father was killed in the second world war.) Without contacts in London, he phoned Jacob Epstein, whose recommendation resulted in a grant to study briefly at the Central School. It was later, when studying full-time at the Central, that he saw the mezzotints of the Japanese master, Yozo Hamaguchi, in a London gallery. He was hooked. Creating a mezzotint is tedious in the extreme. The copper plate must first be prepared with a "rocker" which roughens the surface. A plate may be "rocked" 30 or 40 times. The rough texture is then reduced with a burnisher and a scraper, allowing the print a range of tones from velvety black through the greys to white. Marchant's plates could be months in the making. But the technical demands were the least of his worries. In its 18th- and 19th-century heyday, mezzotint was solely a reproductive medium, for copying masters such as Reynolds and Turner. The development of photography rendered it unfashionable, and by the 1960s the technique, known as la manière anglaise, was a bygone medium. Marchant, by now a teacher in printmaking at the Central, began to create original mezzotints with a colleague, Radavan Kraguly. A perfectionist, he seemed to revel in the straitjacket procedure. Perhaps it was the metaphor of bringing darkness out of light that appealed to this straight-talking, sometimes sombre, man, who would suddenly relax and light up like a gleaming hue on one of his prints. His work was of squares and triangles with the occasional cat, black and ominous, and carefully arranged still lifes, featuring plants, a seed pod, a pot he might have bought at auction to celebrate the sale of a print. There were one-man shows, notably at the Bankside Gallery. He sold well at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, was a Florence Biennale prizewinner, spent a fellowship year at the British School in Rome, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. But making mezzotints was not a paying job. Marchant and his South African wife...

Carol Wax describes her circular images as "most often quasi abstract works that refer to ancient islamic designs using the shapes and attributes of animals, in this case the frog. T...

Carol Wax describes her circular images as "most often quasi abstract works that refer to ancient islamic designs using the shapes and attributes of animals, in this case the deer. T...