Michele Zalopany

Baseball Game: realist large-scale black and white drawing of sports game

1988

This print depicts a baseball game mid-play. An umpire crouches with his hand up, and the batter stands poised. In the lower right, spectators peer onto the field. The awning of the stadium, silhouetted in black, cuts lines across the top of the composition, rising over a hillside crowded with homes. This finely-drawn lithograph features Zalopany's characteristic mastery of light and shadow, from the delicate texture of the field, to the spectators backlit in shadow. The composition of Baseball Game was taken from a page in an old picture book, depicting a downtown section of Caracas, Venezuela that is home to a number of Art Deco buildings, all built in the 1950's. Found images are a regular inspiration for Zalopany's large-scale realism. This print calls additionally on Zalopany's regular depiction of nature contrasted with the man-made: here, a behemoth stadium rises beside rolling hills, themselves punctuated with more buildings than trees. This contrast is enhanced by the use of textured, delicate handmade paper, which lends warmth to this dramatic black-and-white drawing. Image 37.5 x 28 in. / 95.25 x 71.2 cm. Paper 51 x 36 in. / 131 x 93 cm. Lithograph on Korean kozo paper. Edition 70. Signed by the artist lower right in pencil, numbered lower center in pencil. Born in 1955 in Detroit Michigan, Michele Zalopany is a contemporary American artist best known for her large-scale watercolor and pastel paintings based on photographs found in digital picture collections, old books, and flea markets, etc. Found photographs and film screen shots that had originally served other purposes -- family snapshots, police photos...

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