ArtistSmith, Moishe

Artist Years1929-1993

Artist NationalityAmerican

TitleOld Corn

Year1977

MediumPrint > Etching

DimensionsPlate: 8.8 X 11.7 inches
Sheet: 14 X 18 inches

Catalog ReferenceKansas State U. - Beach Museum 2443; AAA cat: 1977-04

Accession Number287113

NotesThroughout the history of printmaking certain artists have been particularly sensitive to the potentialities of the print media. And have made the special qualities of the print an essential part of the creative process. This is not merely a question of mastering the technical manipulation of plate or block, but encompasses a whole series of perceptual attitudes related to knowledge of the kind of line, texture, and color of which each of the print media is capable. Rembrandt had that sense, as did Ensor, Pissarro, and Toulouse-Lautrec (to pick a few examples of relevance to Moishe Smith's work), which is why their prints have such an appropriate feeling of scale, tonality, and "color," and why we respond to them as such direct personal expressions.

Moishe Smith is an artist of this kind. His command of the intaglio plate is profound, and in print after print he displays his understanding of how to use it to evoke a peaceful landscape or a vibrant city square. He is not a miniaturist: his plates are large and his compositions simple, yet his prints have at the same time a sense of intimacy and a feeling of spaciousness. They are complex without being fussy, allusive without being obscure.

His feeling for landscape has been evident from his very earliest prints, and he remains a figurative artist - always concerned with the re-creation of the visible world. But like Ensor, whose work he echoes (but does not mimic) in the "Peasant's Entry into Brussels" and "A Gothic Tale," Smith adds to the familiar world a substantial component of fantasy.

Some of his finest prints are pastoral, like the lyrical "Four Seasons" or the intimate "Pines of Rapallo," but Smith has also remarked on the more grotesque aspects of modern society in a number of satirical works that are almost unknown even to those who have enthusiastically followed his careen. In his most recent plates, such as "Roman Holiday" or "The Glory that was Rome," he pulls together the several strands of his earlier work, combining social comment, the exploration of architectural and natural, the treatment of the human figure in the city square, and adds a new sense of disciplined form and line.

Above all, the prints of Moishe Smith are exceptionally personal statements, acknowledging a tradition of masterful printmaking, but commenting with freshness and individuality on the world in a way that deserves our admiration and assent.
(source: Dr. Alan Fern, Associated American Artists, February, 1974)

Price $325.00

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