Mauricio Lasansky is one of the very few modern artists who have limited their work almost exclusively to the graphic media. As a student he worked with various media, including painting and sculpture, but already by the age of nineteen he began to concentrate on printmaking at the Superior School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the city of his birth. At the age of twenty-two, Lasansky was asked to direct the Free School of Fine arts in Cordoba, where he avidly pursued his interest in printmaking. Although he had achieved recognition and prominence as a young man, Lasansky did not become complacent. When he was offered a Guggenheim Fellowship to study printmaking in New York in 1943, he welcomed the opportunity to broaden his experience.

Lasansky arrived in New York at a time when printmaking in the United States was undergoing a major redirection and revitalization. During the early 1940s, artists fresh from the WPA graphic art projects were eager to continue their work in printmaking. Serigraphy, a technique developed on one of the federal art projects, was emerging as an imaginative new method of color printing. Louis Schanker and Werner Drewes were re-evaluating and expanding the possibilities of the color woodcut. At Stanley William Hayter's workshop in New York, artists were exploring new ways of working in the medium of intaglio printmaking.

Prior to the 1940s, the standards by which prints were made and judged in the United States were conceived largely in terms of established artistic tradition. Although many excellent prints were created, most of them were small in size, black and white, linear in conception, and technically conservative. Modern stylistic developments introduced into the United States at the famous Armory Show of 1913 had little effect on American printmakers. Some artists emulated the Old Masters, but most printmakers remained within the strong American tradition of realism, modified at times with selected elements of abstraction, expressionism, or surrealism. The exhibition of prints was controlled largely by conservative print societies, such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of American Etchers. They valued precise draughtsmanship and technical virtuosity more highly than innovation.

The upheaval and discontent spawned by the Depression contributed to a democratization of art in the 1930s. The WPA Federal Art Projects brought art to public places, and printmaking was seen as a means of bringing multiple original works of art into the possession of large numbers of people. Despite the proliferation of prints that resulted, few artists challenged the stylistic and technical limitations that had been traditionally ascribed to printmaking. It was not until the 1940s that artists working in the various print media discovered that color, texture, abstraction, and large scale were not necessarily alien to printmaking. During World War II and the following years, the emphasis in American printmaking shifted to stylistic and technical experimentation.

An important factor in this revitalization of American printmaking was the major influx of European emigré artists to the United States just prior to and during the Second World War. Printmaking had a much longer and more dynamic tradition in Europe. Some of the greatest European artists have shown a strong interest in printmaking throughout their careers; the prints of Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya are as handsome and powerful as their paintings. Well-known modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst, were also accomplished printmakers. Among the emigrés to the United States were such artists as Marc Chagall, André Masson, Yves Tanguy, George Grosz, and Jacques Lipchitz, who made prints as well as paintings and sculpture. Their involvement with the graphic media gave new stature to prints in the estimation of many Americans who has previously considered prints to be minor works of art. Some of the emigré artists worked at Atelier 17, the printmaking workshop that Hayter had transplanted from Paris to New York in 1940. Mauricio Lasansky was invited by Hayter to join the workshop within months after his arrival in the United States, and for almost two years he became part of this international vanguard of artists whose work radically altered the course of intaglio printmaking in America.

The opportunity to work side by side with prominent European artists and the emphasis placed on technical experimentation at Hayter's workshop were of great importance to Lasansky. Although he had been an accomplished printmaker before he came to New York, the physical isolation of Argentina from the centers of modern art had limited his creative development. Much of the art to which he had access had a strongly provincial or academic flavor. Very few Old Master prints were available for study in Argentina. He was able to see some contemporary European and American art in the few serious art publications that came to Argentina from abroad, but he had little opportunity to view it first-hand. In such a print as Figura, one sees Lasansky's early desire to experiment as early as 1938. His abstract fragmentation of space, the surreal treatment of the figure, and his use of an irregularly cut plate indicate that he was already pursuing new means of expression. However, it was not until he came to New York that he found the stimulation and encouragement to develop these interests further.

Upon his arrival in New York, Lasansky undertook an exhaustive study of all the prints in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. In particular, Lasansky admired the direct engraving technique of Mantegna and the powerful social content of Goya's prints. He was also interested in the prints of the German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Among his contemporaries, the work of Picasso and Hayter had perhaps the greatest impact on him. While many of Lasansky's Argentine prints were characterized by a poetic, dream-like atmosphere, his prints made in New York have a greater emotional intensity, both in his choice of subject matter and his manner of expression. The image of the horse in such prints as Doma and Caballos en Celo is strongly reminiscent of Picasso's iconography of the Guernica period. The vigorous linear abstractions in Sol y Luna and Time in Space recall Hayter's emphasis on automatic drawing as a means of creating a composition. Nonetheless, Lasansky assimilated these influences, but without sacrificing his individuality.

Concurrently with this marked change in style and expression, Lasansky enlarged his repertoire of printmaking techniques. Although he had made lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and drypoints in Argentina, none of these media seemed adequate to express the energy and movement central to his new imagery. Burin engraving, which he first used extensively at Atelier 17, seemed better suited to his objective. Until that time, drypoint had been his favored medium. He appreciated the directness of drypoint and became quite accomplished in the medium, but the delicacy and refinement inherent in this technique did not seem appropriate for expressing the energy and emotion he wished to convey. Compare, for example, his drypoint self-portrait of 1943 to his engraved self-portrait of 1945. The soft, atmospheric nuances and elegance of the earlier work are rejected in favor of the forceful, bristling lines of the later one. While a drypoint needle scratches the surface of the plate, a burin can dig deeply into the plate to create a bold, dark, raised line when printed. In Doma, the great physical resistance of the plate to Lasansky's burin seems to have increased the dynamic energy of his line. The very character of the lines expresses the violence and brutality of two figures in direct combat.

Lasansky has become so enamored of the copper plate that he has limited himself almost exclusively to the intaglio process of printmaking. He has described his relation to the plate as he might speak of a lover: "The copper plate is not a passive medium for reproduction purposes, but rather as an active participant in determining the ultimate form of the work of art . . . the sensuous sculptural qualities of the plate must excite the touch as well as the eye. But mere excitement is not enough; complete union must take place between the artist and the plate. One must learn when to stop—just at the point of possession." This intense involvement with the copper plate was an attitude that many modern printmakers shared. They saw the plate not merely as a surface on which to draw an image, but instead as a material to be pierced, scraped, bitten, and cut. Artists became actively involved in trying new grounds, tools, acids, and combinations of techniques with which to manipulate the surface of the plate. Their plates often came to resemble low-relief sculptures that were in themselves as interesting as the prints pulled from them. Finished plates were frequently included in Atelier 17 exhibitions and later in exhibitions of Lasansky's "Iowa Print Group."

One consequence of this intense, personal involvement with the copper plate was the often unpredictable manner in which the image developed. Traditionally, an artist had a sketch or at least a good idea of how he wished his final print to appear. Methods were then chosen to realize this predetermined image. Even Rembrandt's extensive reworking and experimentation in the various states of his prints were directed primarily toward achieving a specific effect. However, Lasansky allows the actual process of working the plate to play a much more influential role in determining the final image. He has explained: "Drawing in our studio may serve as the first inspiration for a print, but once it is transcribed to the plate, it is forgotten and the plate begins to dictate the ultimate result." Hence, experiments with new techniques, accidental effects, and unforeseen alterations of the composition are as important in determining the final image as the artist's original conception. An early state of Profile with Red Band gives little indication of what the final state will be. The process of working on the plate often suggested lines of development that the artist may not have originally envisioned. In some of Lasansky's prints such as Boy, the artist has retained traces of lines from earlier states to indicate the complex process by which the image grew.

The variety of techniques that Lasansky uses to create a single print suggests how many stages the plate goes through before the work of art attains its final form. In Bodas de Sangre, for example, one master copper plate and eight zinc color plates were worked with engraving, etching, gouged-out white areas, aquatint, soft ground, lift ground, grease ground, an electric stippler, and extensive scraping and burnishing. To some, such a method might seem unnecessarily complex, but to Lasansky, this combination of techniques allowed him to achieve a richness of surface and eloquence of expression unattainable by any other means. Once the various techniques of printmaking have been learned well, they become internalized. What might seem indirect and complicated to an outsider, might be perfectly normal or even routine to a printmaker. It has been suggested that the discipline imposed by the metal plate has "at once a liberating and controlling effect on the artist." It is an indication of Lasansky's mastery of intaglio printmaking that the effects he creates enhance his imagery rather than overwhelm it.

Lasansky's dedication to experimentation and to the expansion of the boundaries of intaglio printmaking have challenged what were once thought to be the limitations of this medium. Of all the printmaking media, the intaglio processes seemed to be best suited for linear expression. Soft ground, lift ground, aquatint, open biting, and extensive scraping permitted an artist to introduce large areas of texture or tone to his composition, as Lasansky did in Quetzalcoatl. He was able to control and coordinate fifty-four separate plates to create an image as colorful as those in many paintings. Even more astonishing is his ability to produce a print of life-size dimensions. A veritable tour de force, this print shatters all previous conceptions of what an intaglio print might be.

Perhaps more than any other aspect of his art, experimentation has been the key to Lasansky's success both as an artist and as a teacher. His search for new means of expression has led him to explore a variety of solutions to recurring problems. The originality of each of his self-portraits, for example, is due less to actual changes in his physiognomy than to his ability to take a fresh approach to a familiar subject. As a teacher, Lasansky feels it is more important to imbue his students with an eagerness to experiment and an enthusiasm for the medium than to teach specific techniques or concepts: "Artists should have freedom to experiment in any way and to draw inspiration from any source whatsoever. There should especially be freedom to capitalize on mistakes. The student finds that even if three-quarters of his plate is unsatisfactory, he may still correct and improve his work by scraping down the metal; this will develop security and a fearless experimental attitude. The artist must be an inventor as well as a craftsman."

Lasansky's decision to accept a teaching position at the University of Iowa in 1945 had far-reaching consequences for the subsequent development of American printmaking. His previous experience as a director of the Free School of Fine Arts in Cordoba and as a member of Atelier 17 in New York enabled him to establish a vital printmaking workshop that has served as the model for many other university departments, often run by Lasansky's former students. Artists from the "Iowa Print Group" have taught in every state of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, England, Germany, and Italy. Although Lasansky encourages his students to assert their individuality as artists, most of them share a love for working on the copper plate and a sincere respect for the process of experimentation, which they in turn pass on to their own students.

During the 1940s, when it was difficult for an artist to exhibit his prints, Lasansky organized exhibitions for the "Iowa Print Group" at such prestigious museums as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Walker Art Center. In 1959 the United States Information Agency sponsored an exhibition of seventy prints by thirty-eight members of the Iowa Print Group, which toured Latin America for several years as part of its overseas cultural program. The response to these exhibitions was enthusiastic, both from other artists and from the viewing public. Artists who have never made prints were prompted to explore this possibility for their own work. The graphic arts gained great acceptance as a legitimate means of creative expression once people began to realize how versatile and powerful intaglio printmaking could be. The increased stature of printmaking in art schools and universities, and the growing importance of prints in galleries, museums, and private collections, are due in no small part to Mauricio Lasansky and his students.

Reprinted from "Mauricio Lasansky: A Retrospective Exhibition of His Prints and Drawings," a catalog published on the occasion of an exhibition at the University of Iowa Museum of Art (September 24 - November 28, 1976).