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9. Philippe Mohlitz (b. 1941) La Vierge aux Étrons (The Virgin of Turds)
Engraving, 1981, 197 x 147 mm. Perfect impression on textured, white, wove paper with full margins, signed, dated, titled and numbered in pencil from the edition of 100. Mohlitz was the progenitor of the French “Fantastic” school of print making of the twentieth century, a group that has grown considerably and produced many outstanding images. It found its antecedents in the nineteenth-century work of Bresdin and Malardot and perhaps even further back in that of the sixteenth-century Jean Gourmont. But Mohlitz, unlike his contemporary co-fantasists, worked exclusively in copper engraving. “Technique is an essential part of creation,” wrote Walter Koschatsky in an introduction to an exhibit of Mohlitz’s work, and to see the artist’s black humor and modern disillusionments conveyed through the technique of Albrecht Dürer, and with Dürer-like command, is a unique experience. Despite the title, this is not a sacrilegious work but a nightmare of contemporary life. The church is outside; the broken floor of the room opens on who knows what kind of hell underneath. |
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