Print of the Day!! Tues, Aug. 12, 2024 is by Roger Vieillard (1907-1989): "Tour de Babel", intaglio, 1935, 11/40.

The Print of the Day!! for Tuesday, August 12, 2024. An engraving by Atelier 17 printmaker Roger Vieillard (1907-1989). 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.

"Tour de Babel" (also called: Architecture II) is an engraving, done in 1935. The platemark measures 14-7/8 x 10-5/8 inches. This impression is pencil signed, titled, and editioned "11/40" by the artist in the lower margin. It was printed by the artist at Atelier 17 on a sheet of ivory laid Vidalon, France paper that measures 24 x 15- 15-7/8 inches. A reference for this image is Hacker 21; Ashmolean 6 (illustrated page 33). The gallery inventory number for this work is 23925.

This rare surreal engraving by French printmaker Roger Vieillard (1907-1989) 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.

Roger Vieillard's engravings were represented in the important 1944 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York titled "Hayter and Studio 17" which included 60 prints by 32 artists from 12 nations.

Vieillard was inspired to do this print after walking beneath the Eiffel Tower and his alternative title is "Architecture II." He drew the tower from the inside as it soars to the sky, architectural elements supporting each other with fragility. The image brings to mind Piranesi's Carceri series and M.C. Escher's strange, interwoven structures.

Hacker notes about this image on page 12: "'Tour de Babel' is an invention of which Piranesi himself would have been envious, for nothing since the Carceri even approximates to this dazzling, vertinginous tour de force...the Tower of Babel depicted from the inside, looking upward. The structure consists of vast arches, huge columns and pilasters, winding stone staircases and bridges supported by giant caryatids, all ascending to the dizzy heights of a dome that floats almost weightlessly above...A nice detail is added by a minute 'penseur', seated on a pilaster at top left 'contemplating the absurdity of it all'. Hacker also comments on page 96 of his Vieillard catalog: "...Vieillard rarely printed the whole of an edition simultaneously, but typically printed only as and when further impressions were needed. If a better name for a print occurred to him, he did not hesitate to change the title..."

Roger Vieillard was born in Mans, France on February 9, 1907 and was classically educated at the Sorbonne in Paris with a focus on literature and law, while also establishing himself as an internationally noted tennis player. After his discharge from the army he discovered the wire sculptures of Alexander Caulder and began creating his own, beginning around 1930. Vieillard continued to train and compete as a tennis player and, wanting financial stability, he took a position with the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie as a financial analyst. He continued to draw and paint and in 1934 he met experimental printmaker Stanley William Hayter who, along with John Buckland-Wright, introduced him to the burin and how to create an "active line" on copper. He began working in the evenings at Atelier 17 and formed a close friendship with Hayter and Joseph Hecht.

In 1938 Vieillard married American painter and fellow Atelier 17 cohort Anita de Caro, with whom he would later collaborate; in the meantime, he continued to exhibit with Atelier 17 and work from his own studio. With the onset of World War II he was conscripted into the French army beginning in 1940. While mobilized, he began working on the manuscript for his novel, Les Rives du Scamandre, which wouldn't be published until 1994.

Over the next forty years Vieillard continued to create prints, both as unique artworks and as illustrations for his own livres d'artiste. His subject matter and style appeared to borrow somewhat from Piranesi, with imagery of fantastical architecture that often meditated on biblical and mythological scenes, executed in a surreal Precisionst manner. In the early 1960s he began to create "plaster prints", a technique which had evolved at Atelier 17 in the 1930s. He retired as deputy director from the bank in 1967 and was elected president of the Société Peintres-Gravures Francais in 1970. Roger Vieillard died in Paris on March 1, 1989, shortly after his election into the Academie des beaux-arts.

To purchase this work, see other prints, or read a biography for Roger Vieillard use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/artist/2441/Vieillard/Roger

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