About The Artist:
Al Held
Al Held is an abstract artist best known for large-scale, geometric abstractions that often employ illusionist devices. He began his career in the mid 1950s, showing gestural abstractions with heavy impasto, characteristic of the second-generation New York School. Born in Brooklyn in 1928, Held was a high-school dropout. But after a 1945-47 stint in the Navy, he enrolled in the Art Students League. From 1950 to '53 he lived in Paris, where he...
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About The Medium:
Etching
The printing process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In traditional pure etching, a metal (usually copper, zinc or steel) plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with a pointed etching needle where they want a line to appear in the finished piece, exposing the bare metal. The plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper (often moistened to soften it). The paper picks up the ink from the etched lines, making a print.