Daniel Beugniot (Dul)

Clarity 4

circa 1990

Daniel Beugniot, who signs his prints Dul, was born in Bordeaux in 1954 and died in April 2010. He spent many years teaching etching to visual arts students at the University of Montaigne-Bordeaux 3. Daniel Beugniot joined with Gérard Trignac to found the Estampe d'Aquitaine in 1985. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux with the national diploma of Fine Arts, under the training of Philippe Labèque. He completed the designs for many buildings during a year at the School of Architecture at the time when Michel Desportes provided courses in perspective and engraving. This influence also resulted in the twisted perspectives in the work of another engraver at the time: Phillipe Mohlitz. Daniel Beugniot did not take this path toward the fantastique. But he did enjoy playing with perspective to create ambiguities in his forms through mosaic compositions where each tessellation would have its own vanishing point, but whose lines fit into a larger composition. Research conducted for a series of engravings on the Bordeaux vineyards led Daniel Beugniot to invent a technique of engraving on paper that he exploited in his later work. On the base matrix he adds pieces of lacerated paper, which he fixes with glue. The surfaces are worked with instruments that produce dots and scratches digging the surface. The different inking of these levels produces a superposition of several colors which gives the print its depth.