Cleopatra by Ernest Bradfield Freed

Cleopatra by Ernest Bradfield Freed

Cleopatra

Ernest Bradfield Freed

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.
Title

Cleopatra

 
Artist
Year
1963  
Technique
color intaglio 
Image Size
34 5/8 x 44 3/4" platemark 
Signature
lower right margin, pencil 
Edition Size
5 of 30  
Annotations
title 
Reference
 
Paper
heavy wove 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
11131 
Price
$2,500.00 
Description

Ernest Bradfield Freed’s luminescent print, “Cleopatra,” is an exceptional example of the intaglio technique and its place in Abstract Expressionism. Using etching, engraving, and sugar lift aquatint, Freed “paints” the plate with texture, framing the image of history’s most famous monarch in Cubistic, crisscrossed paths of light and shadow. The composition is extremely large for an intaglio print -- measuring nearly 3 by 4 feet -- yet reads as nuanced as any oil painting, illuminating Freed’s deft use of the requisite cumbersome tools to produce the vibrant energy he employs on the plate.

This may be an image of Cleopatra’s final moments in the darkened tomb where, by some accounts, her suicide took place. Freed displays assured placement of the recumbent figure whose face tilts upward, as if in supplication, perhaps to ask the gods for mercy on her son and heir to the Ptolemaic throne, Cesarion.

For these large intaglios Freed had to build a special, oversized printing press, have the paper specially made for him and engage his son to help print the large sheets.

 

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.