Marc Balakjian

In Memory of an Historic Phrase

1975

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...

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...

Hino creates a still life of a lotus from an edition of 65. A prominent figure in Buddhist and Egyptian culture, and native flower for both India and Vietnam, the lotus holds enormous symbolic weight. It spans various thousand-year-old Eastern cultures and yet, is still considered one of the most sacred flowers today. So what is it about this mysterious blossom that people find so enrapturing? Its colorful bloom is an obvious suspect, but the lotus also has a life cycle unlike any other. With its roots based in mud, it submerges every night into murky river water, and—undeterred by its dirty environment—it miraculously re-blooms the next morning without residue on its petals. Although cultures have their own interpretations of this daily process, there is a general consensus among ancient texts...

Python is a hand-pulled mezzotint in an edition of 25. This is #7/25. Jacob Crook was born in St. Louis, MO in 1985. Crook works primarily in the intagli...

12 copper mezzotints printed on Hahnemulle paper in an edition of 12. This is impression #5 The 12 complementary mezzotints are included in boxed portfolio Graduated from the Natio...

Carol Wax's mezzotint "Night Game" explores the games of our waking life versus those we play in our dreams. It is signed, titled and numbered in pencil -- an edition of 75. Carol W...

Kazuhisa Honda (b. 1948) "Lemon Tree" c. 1980s Mezzotint Signed Lower Right Numbered Lower Left 81/250 Site Size: approx. 8 x 5 inches Framed Size: approx...

“Chair & rooftop” is a mezzotint engraving created by Robert Kipniss in 2015. Printed in an edition of 30 this impression is signed in pencil and inscribed "27/30." The paper size i...

Mario AVATI Still Life with Eggs Original black manner etching Handsigned in pencil Numbered / 150 copies On vellum 38 x 48 cm (c. 15 x 19 in) Au...

This is a three-plate color mezzotint. The mat dimensions are 20 x 16 inches. Signed "Schkolnyk" at lower right.

Edition of 25, signed, numbered AGNIESZKA LECH-BIŃCZYCKA Graduated from University of Rzeszów in a field of Artistic Education with specialisation in g...

Richard Hricko has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and juried competitions, including the National Academy Museum in New York, Glynn Vivian Art Museum in Wales, and G...