By: Erik Desmazières
Medium: Etching, aquatint & roulette on chine appliqué
Year: 2011
Edition: From Suite Musaeum Clausum by Sir Thomas Brown (also available on request)
Signed, titled, dated and numbered from edition of 40 printed on chine appliqué
Image Size: 11.5 x 7.36 inches
Desmazieres has a long-standing interest in curiosity cabinets, which provide a rich source of dark and intellectual material for an artist with Desmazieres' skills. The image is the rather famous skull of Sir Thomas Brown, a 17th-century writer who was as curious as the oddities he collected.
Desmazières is an intaglio printmaker of the Art Fantastique school, whose artists find their aesthetic antecedents in Bresdin, Piranesi, Callot and Durer. In addition to prints he is well known for his illustrated artist books and portfolios. Erik Desmazières is considered one of the greatest contemporary printmakers, and has had more than 20 museum retrospectives in Europe, Canada and the United States during the past few years. In 2009 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l'Institut de France. Desmazières was born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1948 and resides in Paris. He is a graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and studied printmaking at the Cours du Soir de la Ville de Paris. He also serves as president of La Societe des Peintres Graveurs Francais.
