Color etching, aquatint, flatbite, spitbite aquatint, and soapground aquatintexpand_more
Gift of funds from the Print and Drawing Curatorial Councilexpand_more 2008.10
Painter and printmaker Sean Scully began his career in the 1960s as a proponent of Minimalism, producing a body of work that consisted of highly simplified linear and hard-edged geometric abstractions. In the 1980s, he turned away from this approach, having grown dissatisfied with the emotional detachment and cool objectivity of Minimalist ideology. Building on the spare geometric vocabulary of his earlier work, Scully then began to manipulate color, tone, texture, and the layering of forms to infuse his abstractions with a rich materiality and evocative emotional tenor.
"Sotto Voce" exemplifies Scully's skills and temperment as a printmaker. Here, he exploits the subtleties of various tonal intaglio (etching) processes to achieve a strongly geometric composition that is at once abstract and tantalizingly hints at representation. The print's title may be translated from the Latin as "in a quiet voice."
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