Print of the Day!! Sun., Aug. 18, 2024 is by Atelier 17 printmaker Harold Persico Paris (1925-1979): "In the Garden", color engraving, ca. 1955.

Print of the Day!! Sunday, August 18, 2024. Atelier 17 printmaker Harold Persico Paris (1925-1979).

Another image in a series of works by artists who worked at Atelier 17 in Paris and New York. The Annex Galleries is celebrating the summer by featuring prints by Atelier 17 printmakers. 2024 has seen the launch of The Atelier 17 Project, Inc which is preparing for the 100th birthday of the workshop in 2027: https://www.a17project.org/ ?

"In the Garden" (from the 'Hosannah Suite') is an intaglio, a color engraving printed from a lucite plate. It is signed in relief within the image by the artist in the lower left image. This uniquely inked intaglio was printed a la poupée?around 1955 by the artist on a sheet of handmade antique-white wove paper. The image and the paper measure 11-1/4 x 14-5/8 inches. A reference for this image is Portland 16a/b. The gallery inventory number for this work is 17524.

This unique color intaglio by Harold?Persico?Paris is available from the gallery for purchase.

Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law.

Check out our virtual booth at the Satellite Print Fair's on-line website: OnPaper.art: https://onpaper.art/the-annex-galleries

Harold Paris used lucite, a form of acrylic, engraving tools and solvents to create the plate for this intaglio. The color was applied topically, rubbed or painted directly into the intaglio spaces. The black was printed relief, all the colors were printed in a single pass through the press.

In 1952, Harold Paris began the preliminary drawings for what would eventually become a suite of prints entitled Hosannah. The project was originally titled "Eternal Judgment", and Paris was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for it in 1953. It wasn't until 1958 that the first version of the suite was completed in Nancy, France and exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Paris made a total of five suites, completing the final version, known as the Portland Suite, in 1971. This version is unique in that it contains nine accompanying drawings. Paris said of these, "... some of the nine drawings are preparatory sketches for etchings and lithographs while others remain related ideas and drawings only." This unique version resides at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute, Portland, Oregon.

Paris noted about the symbolic images and their reality in the portfolio: "'Hosannah' is a reflection of the Mystic Forces that move us and have moved me in my Life. I believe in the Images that are presented here. Their reality and humaness are an integral part of all the World as I know it." The images in the portfolio brings to mind the works of Bruegel, Goya, Redon, and Rouault.

The 'Hosannah Suite' is epical or legendary in its design, and Portland Art Museum curator Gordon Gilkey wrote: "Paris has identified four guiding themes for its creation: "Angelic War, Trial of Man, Fall and Submergence, and Hosannah. The word 'Hosannah' is defined as a word of praise or adoration, especially in Judaic and Christian use. This should not confuse the reader into thinking that Hosannah is a religious work. It is spiritual and secular, and the ideas and emotions that are expressed by the images are both universal and very personal, relating feelings of anxiety, despair, anguish, and misery."

The first copy of Hosannah consists of thirty-one prints, three of them which were colored. The techniques the artist used are varied; metal intaglios, lithographs, and acrylic engravings, and the sizes of the images are generally large. Individual prints from the suites have found themselves dispersed to different collections including the Library of Congress, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. Harold Persico Paris was born in Long Island, New York on 6 August 1925. As a youth, Paris was allowed to work behind the scenes at the Yiddish theatre where his father was an actor, applying the makeup which transformed the actors.

Creativity was inherent to his being and this early dramatic influence remained with the artist, showing up later in his costumes, his flair, his personality, and the personal drama, tension, and inventiveness of his media and his imagery. Paris studied in America and Europe but remained an outsider, eschewing the art centers as well as the movements. He studied at Atelier 17 and the Creative Lithographic Workshop in New York. Awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Fulbright Fellowship, he applied these to realizing goals in graphics, painting and casting.

Paris lived in Madrid while guest instructing at the Academia de San Fernando and in Munich while studying casting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künst. As a correspondent for Stars and Stripes during World War II, Paris witnessed the death camps at Buchenwald. Profoundly affected, his personal torment underlies his imagery. There are Semitic references in his imagery and titles but the iconography is personal, unique, and defies categorization. He began his Buchenwald series of graphics in 1945.?

Paris moved to California between 1960-1961. At the age of thirty-five, he became an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California Berkeley and was promoted to full Professor in 1972. During these seminal years he continued to explore the new medium of plastic and expand upon the use of ceramics by developing means to strengthen and support ceramic walls and rooms. He co-founded a bronze foundry in Berkeley and developed techniques of welding and casting, thought impossible by others. Ingenious, Harold Paris produced haunting imagery from diverse and innovative media.? ?

To purchase this print, see other works or read a biography for Harold Persico Paris use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/artist/1820/Paris/Harold

Use this link to view our complete inventory on our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q=