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Sensual Nude Mikio Watanabe LE Art Print Mezzotint DAWN

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:275.00 USD Estimated At:675.00 - 750.00 USD
Sensual Nude Mikio Watanabe LE Art Print Mezzotint DAWN
"Like a tree or a stone, human beings also possess this original purity. I would like to return to that point of simplicity and have the vision to look at all human and living beings," states well-known artist Mikio Watanabe. The strong desire to develop that vision is one of the reasons why we find Watanabe's mezzotints of the nude female form so compelling:
Title: "L'Aube I" ("Dawn")
1987
Mezzotint on BFK Rives
Numbered from a limited edition of 30
Signed in pencil in the margin LR
Sheet: 22 × 30
Image: 15 × 19½
All four corners creased; readily matted out
Otherwise very good - excellent condition
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.

"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 (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.