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565974

DUETTO II 2 Nudes Sensuous Mikio Watanabe Art Mezzotint

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:180.00 USD Estimated At:650.00 - 750.00 USD
DUETTO II 2 Nudes Sensuous Mikio Watanabe Art Mezzotint
"During the slow process of engraving, as I scrape the burrs that I have incised on the copper plate and then polish it, the sensitivity which lies inside me can be revealed. Giving shape and light to what was before absolute darkness, I try to feel this universe of purity which exists deep inside the human body," says the artist Mikio Watanabe. Perhaps it is this deeply felt process that makes Watanabe's mezzotints so beautiful:
Title: "Duetto II" ("Two Bodies II")
1994
Mezzotint on Rives de Lin Moulin du Gue paper; all four edges softly deckled
Numbered from a limited edition of 90, plus XXX Roman
Signed in pencil in the margin LR
Sheet: 15 × 20
Image: 6¼ × 8
Very good - excellent condition; never mounted, matted or framed
Certificate of Authenticity

Watanabe creates a mezzotint by repeatedly pressing a curved, serrated mezzotint rocker over the surface of a copper plate until has received many thousands of tiny indentations from this tool. This procedure is extremely time-consuming — most of the plates take 70 - 80 hours to produce — but plates made this way yield velvety blacks that can be obtained no other way. After the entire surface of the plate has been roughened, scraper and burnishers are used to raise tones of gray and white.


Mikio Watanabe (Japan, b. 1954) completed his studies in Tokyo in 1977 and settled in Paris, where he learned engraving techniques at the Atelier 17. Since 1981, Mikio Watanabe has focused on mezzotint and his works can be found in many public collections including Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Central Academy of Art, Kuala Lumpur and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
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