Metal, Acid, Line: Etchings from the Loeb

The prints in this exhibition share a common medium: etching. Around 1500, Daniel Hopfer in Augsburg first applied etching, already in use for decorative metalwork including armor, to printmaking. In this early form, it consisted of images made by lines incised with the aid of acid on metal plates. These were inked and run through a press with paper, resulting in the transfer of image to page. This practice, along with subsequent related innovations, continues to be performed by artists today. The works in this exhibition, co-curated with Christina Tenaglia of the Art Department at Vassar College, originate from Asia, Europe, and North America, and range in date from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. The selection was made in conjunction with Art 209, a studio course that teaches the fundamentals of intaglio printmaking including the techniques of etching and drypoint as well as aquatint, engraving, embossing, and stippling. One aim of this exhibition was to show both the complexity achieved by master etchers as well as the accessibility of the medium to those new to the print shop and artist’s studio.

Process is the guiding theme of the exhibition. While the production of an etching presents practical challenges, artists manipulate and test these constraints to achieve a wide variety of effects. To highlight this dynamism, the groupings of works are based not on subject, artist, or place of origin, but rather on categories particularly relevant to practitioners like cross-hatching, texture, and movement. This approach solicited a search through the collection for technically masterful and varied works, prompting the display of several rarely seen in the galleries. Viewers are invited to engage with these prints as an artist might—seeking out not only form but the marks that construct it, not only color but the value that enlivens it, and not only line but the hand that made it.