Archiguille Art

Original excellent condition, linen backed United Airlines: Seattle, the 1968 airplane airline aviation travel poster promoting travel to Seattle, Washington aboard United Airlines and featuring art of a Native American Indian totem pole...

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...

landscape mixed media on canvas original artwork Original Created:2019 Subjects:Landscape Materials: Canvas Styles: #Abstract #AbstractExpressionism #Minimalism #Modern #Expressio...

Salvador Dalí Le Chateau de Gala (Gala's Castle) from After 50 Years of Surrealism Original etching, hand colored 1974 Image size: 15 3/...

Alejandro Rubio Valley Landscape, 2025 Oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches This one-of-a-kind oil painting on canvas is stretched across wooden stretcher bars.

John von Wicht (German-American, 1888 - 1970) was a painter and printmaker whose abstract works evolved from European modernism to dynamic, expressionistic forms. Born in Holstein, G...

Earl Hill (1927-1985). Gas Station Attendant, 1966. Oil on masonite panel, 10.5 x 13.5 inches, 15 x 18 inches framed. Signed and dated lower right. Inscribed...

This artwork "Horse" 1971, is an original etching on Wove paper by Japanese artist Akio Yamao, b.1933. It is hand signed, dated and numbered 13/50 in pencil by the artist. The artwor...

“Yellow Series #5” is an original abstract painting on paper by Denver-based artist Wilma Fiori, created in 2006. This striking composition explores color, rhythm, and spatial balanc...

Noverre - Horse Landscape I, 2003 C-type Hand Print, Mounted on Aluminium, Custom framed, Museum low glare, UV protective art glass 36.5 x 94 cm / 14....

This abstract oil painting showcases a compelling investigation into the visual language of oil. The artist explores the dichotomy between dense and ethereal forms by alternating bet...

Giorgio de Chirico 1960s Original Signed Lithography Lithograph with golden yellow background Signed in pencil lower left ‘P d A’ Artist's proof Signed in pencil lower right ‘G. De ...