Upper School art students were recently introduced to intaglio printmaking. Below, US art teacher Auguste Elder describes more about the process and how our students furthered their craft.

Pronounced, in-Tah-leo, this 15th-century printmaking form is relatively easy to learn, but can take a lifetime to master. A heavily sequential process, artists began by incising (scratching) an image onto a plexiglass plate, inking it, then selectively removing the ink, and “pulling” both plate and damp paper through high-pressure rollers on a printing press. These artists took their craft a bit further by learning how to cut mats for their final images, which not only took into consideration how audiences might engage their works once publicly displayed, but involved a measure of applied mathematics to navigate. One of the characteristics of this printmaking form is that a seasoned artist can make many duplicate prints that appear to be relatively similar to one another from the same plate. This process can be intentionally subverted to generate wildly different variations from the original, offering the artist a nearly unlimited amount of creative freedom. 

To see an exhibit of students' intaglio prints, visit the display cases on the second floor of 81st Street, by the elevator lobby.