Untitled Abstraction

John Ihle

John Ihle learned printmaking from Iowa graduate Charles White in 1948. In 1949 he went to study with Mauricio Lasansky at Iowa during the summer of 1949. At Iowa he learned many of the experimental intaglio techniques that had been developed at Atelier 17 in New York and, in turn, by Lasansky. He then went on to assist Iowa graduate Ernest Freed at Bradley University.

Ihle combines aquatint, etching, engraving and offset linocut to create this composition that evokes the interior of a cave, with vignettes of pictographic beasts and flora, a small figurative element in a doorway and overall tones that simulate moss and rock.

This rare impression, numbered 3/10, is not listed in any of the artist's catalogues and is signed including the artist's middle initial, something he quit doing in 1950.