Seeing Ghosts

Ian Hugo

A surreal, fantasy engraving by Atelier 17 artist Ian Hugo A human-like, amorphous ghostly figure seems to be floating in a dark sea while emitting a soundless scream. This impression is from the artist's estate.

Hugo became involved with Atelier 17 in order to learn engraving so he could illustrate Anais Nin's books. She was having a difficult time finding publishers and they decided to publish her works by themselves, a collaborative effort.

In 1942 Hugo's wife, author Anaïs Nin, (1903-1977) was looking for a publisher for her book "Under a Glass Bell." When she could not find one she and Hugo started her own Genor press, with Hugo creating a series of copper engravings, printed in relief as illustrations.

"Seeing Ghosts", like many of the Atelier 17 experimental prints, was done using engraving to incise the sharp lines and soft-ground etching to add textures to the surface of the copper plate. This composition was printed from the surface of the inked plate, the engraved lines (which were not inked) appear in the image as white lines. Hugo impressed fabric into the soft-ground and it prints as a veil, from which the figure appears.

Hugo comments about his engraving in his "New Eyes on the Art of Engraving", The Alicat Book Shop Press, 1946:

"Then other forms, still stranger began to appear and it was not long after that biologists and zoologists told me that they saw striking resemblances in my work to primitive cell forms, particularly to the protozoa..." and "Any zoologist could take from a drop of that man's blood stranger fish than ever came from the bottom of the ocean or from my engravings."

A fictionalized portrait of Ian Hugo, whose given name was Hugh Parker Guiler, and his wife, author Anais Nin, appears in Philip Kaufman's 1990 film "Henry & June." Hugo was one the early printmakers to help establish the Atelier 17 in New York with Stanley William Hayter, whom they had known in Paris.