Intaglios

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LASANSKY CAME TO THE UNITED STATES from Argentina with a mature imagery and with technical mastery, even virtuosity, in the difficult technique of dry-point. The winner of eighteen first prizes in his native country, he had been appointed Director of the Free Fine Arts School at Villa Maria Córdoba in 1936 at the age of 22, and Director of the Taller Manualidades at Córdoba in 1939. At 21 he had his first one-man show, and the following year his work was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago; the next year he was awarded a prize for the best engraving at the Municipal Exhibit of Plastic Arts in San Francisco. He was well known on both continents when he came to the U.S.A. as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1943.

His first year there was spent in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, studying literally thousands of prints by contemporary and older masters. It must be remembered (in Lasansky's lifetime it has become a matter of past history) that until very recently printmaking, with certain exceptions, had fallen into a low status among the arts. A limited number of techniques were used chiefly as a means of reproducing works originally created in other media. It was necessary to go back to the work of the printmakers of the 16th and 17th centuries to experience the possibilities of working with the copper plate itself.

Lasansky found what he was looking for in the work of Mantegna, Finiguerra, and other masters of the Renaissance: effects peculiar to the results of line engraving, done directly on the plate with the burin. More recent sources of inspiration were the dry-point engravings of Picasso, who had begun to create not on the passive surface of paper, but on the responsive surface of the plate. For Lasansky, the discovery of these endorsements of his own goals provided the impetus he needed.

The following year he began to work in Atelier 17, the workshop of Stanley William Hayter. Hayter had been largely responsible for the rediscovery of many of the techniques utilized in intaglio, including the use of the burin, which had been forgotten in the recent decline of printmaking. In that shop, Lasansky turned to the burin, producing the powerful Self Portrait of 1945 and at the same time experimenting in lithography with equally exciting effect—which resulted in El Cid, one of the few pieces of Lasansky's work which is not true in effect to the direct application of methods native to its medium. Though executed in the process of lithography, El Cid is a monument to Lasansky's personal relationship to the techniques of intaglio. He thinks in terms of the line inscribed into the surface of the plate; his visual ideas manifest themselves in terms of that carved sculptural surface, not the smooth oily track of the lithograph crayon.

Much of Lasansky's work is in the tradition of social comment that had been established for print media. But more and more—deriving inspiration from El Greco, Modigliani, Miro, and Rouault—he has extended his references to areas of experience that in the last century were usually the exclusive domain of painting and sculpture.

Meanwhile, he was also stimulated by direct contact with Chagall, Lipschitz, Rattner, and Matta. He began to explore the possibilities of combined techniques in intaglio. From that time on his work has been marked by the exploitation of each process for its own effect. This can be seen in the detail of Epaña the deep, short, strong line of the burin; the rich, subtle base of various soft-ground textures; and the judicious use of dry-point, with its free, variable, expressive line. His way of working leads to varying visual results. But the form is always the direct outcome of the use of tools and techniques proper to the creation of the image directly upon the plate.

It is the positive response of the plate to the creative gesture of the artist which ties Lasansky so deeply to the processes of intaglio. There, every stroke of the graver's tool meets an equality of resistance from the plate. This imposes great restrictions and disciplines upon the artist, forcing him to consider his own actions and to understand their results in terms of the desired effect upon his plate. It is a process which demands great maturity of behavior.

And Lasansky speaks of "a deep love for the metal plate." The concept of the dynamic, creative equilibrium of active and passive forces is one of the terms by which he lives his life. It is expressed symbolically in For An Eye An Eye. The major part of Lasansky's work expresses this particular relationship to the situations of living and reveals the synthesis of techniques and skills with which he gives form to his reactions.

He has made of his images a truly monumental art form, as important as painting and sculpture. As with them, the form of the image is inseparable from the technique involved in its realization and, also, from a certain relationship to life which enables the artist to use these means to full advantage.

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