Discours d'un Ecologiste Provencal a une Bergere Celtique is a color mezzotint created in 1978 by one of the masters of color mezzotint, Mario Avati. It is pencil signed, titled, dated, and editioned 74/85. It was printed by the artist on ivory BFK Rives wove paper and the platemark measures 11-3/16 x 13-3/4 inches.
In a 1975 interview, Avati is quoted “I don’t pretend to say that objects replace people. But objects, when you question them for a long time, finally answer you. It takes years to establish this dialogue. But when objects begin to respond to you, magic begins. There is something profoundly magical in having, unexpectedly, contact with an object that you believed was immobile. You understand that the atoms that constitute life also constitute objects. Life is all that surrounds us, not just man.”
Mario Avati, painter, printmaker and book illustrator, was born to Italian parents in the Principality of Monaco on 27 May 1921. He studied at the École des Arts Decoratifs in Nice and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He began exploring the techniques of etching and aquatint in 1947 but, by 1957, he had turned exclusively to mezzotint. He was internationally regarded as a master of the medium.
Avati made over 400 prints and illustrated six deluxe
editions of books with original mezzotints. He is one of the finest
mezzotinters in the history of printmaking. Avati’s work was included in
countless solo and group exhibitions and he was awarded the Prix de la Critique
for drawing and printmaking in 1957, a Gold Medal at the First
International Exhibition of Graphic Art in Florence, and the Grand Prix of
Arts of the City of Paris in 1981. He was a member of the Society of French
painters and engravers.
His works are represented in more than 100 public collections including the Musée
des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence; the Gemeente Museum, The Hague; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum
of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, New York; the Bibliothèque national
de France, and the Musée de Louvre, Paris; and the Library of Congress and the
National Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Mario Avati lived and worked in Paris and he died there on February 26, 2009.
