Euphoria is an intaglio, a power tool engraving, from 1955 by American artist Bernard Childs. It is pencil signed, titled, dated, and inscribed épreuve d’essai. This impression of Euphoria is a proof printed in black ink by the artist on ivory BFK Rives paper. The edition was printed simultaneously in five colors and published in an edition of 150. The platemark measures 12-5/8 x 7-1/2 inches.
By definition, euphoria is a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. The skittering, highly energized marks created by the power tool lend this image an exuberance—the lines seemingly poised to leap off the paper.
Bernard Childs once stated, “True printmaking is a risky business, and risk is worthwhile. It leaves the artist free to use his media in a truly creative sense. He doesn’t care how long it takes to perfect a plate or to find or create the tools with which to make it. Nor does he care how many proofs he may have to pull to get the one which satisfies him. It may take six months or two years, but the glow he gets from that first satisfactory proof may last through the next dozen.”
Bernard Childs met the Danish silversmith Peer Smed and later remarked: “From this great craftsman I learned the beauty of metals, the feel of them in my hands, the excitement of fashioning them and the use of the special tools that bring them to life.”
He later mastered industrial tools and metalworking while employed as a machinist. Childs moved to Europe in 1951, living for a year in Italy before settling in Paris for the next fifteen years. In 1954, while spending a few months at Atelier 17 in Paris, Childs combined his interest in metal and knowledge of industrial tools to make experimental intaglio prints, using power tools to incise the plates.
Bernard Childs’ work was included in numerous international solo and group exhibitions and is represented in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Fogg Art Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Newark Public Library, New Jersey; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C; the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
