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Inventive Impressions
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Inventive Impressions

Artists Featured in Exhibition


Edgar Degas (French, 1824-1917) <I>Esterel Village</I>, about 1890
Edgar Degas (French, 1824-1917)
Esterel Village, about 1890
Monotype
Fiftieth Anniversary Gift of the Print Club of Cleveland 1966.177

Edgar Degas (French, 1824-1917)

Degas's trip to visit a friend in Burgundy in 1890 stimulated the artist to create about sixty landscape monotypes, the most extensive group of landscapes in his oeuvre. For the next two years Degas innovated, using oil colors of a limited range to evoke rather than describe the topography. Indefinite, blurred forms reflect Degas's goal to reduce and simplify, pushing many of these scenes to the brink of abstraction.

Degas liked monotype because, unlike drawing on absorbent paper, ink or paint can be manipulated on a metal plate. When the painted plate is covered with paper and run through a printing press, the pressure causes the paint to smear so that the result is somewhat unexpected, as seen here in his work entitled EsterellVillage from about 1890.


Page 3 of 9 | On the next page: Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732-1806)