Monsieur A

Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero

"Monsieur A" was done in 1962 and published by Associated American Artists (AAA). This impression is an artist's proof from 1962, outside the edition of 60 published by AAA two years later in 1964.

Gonzalez-Tornero abandoned his usual bright colors to etch a complex Surreal, mechanical portrait using a deeply bitten, etched line that embosses the paper and reads as a white line because no ink is forced into it. By then scraping and inking the surface of the plate he is able to modulate the composition's grays and blacks. The result is an image that leads the viewer from one element to the next after first viewing the whole "portrait".

S.W. Hayter credits Gonzalez-Tornero with the development of this intaglio technique. See page 99 of "New Ways of Gravure", 1981, Watson Guptil, under "Scraped and Carved Plates":

"The peculiar quality to be found in work in a plate that is bitten away...or scraped away (where the characteristic vibration of the tool does not entirely hide the trace of earlier work) had already been observed and applied in the 'forties. But it was Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero who first undertook to make a plate entirely with the scraper, sometimes grounded and re-bitten with acid and again scraped so that the final appearance of the metal was like hammered silver..."