Industrial Complex

Peter Baczek

Peter Beczek's subjects of choice are often simple architectural compostions, like many of the precisionists of the 1920s and '30s. Precisionism is sometimes defined as reduced compositions with simple shapes and underlying geometrical structures, with clear outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of surfaces.

Baczek used four copper plates and a combination of aquatint and etching, printing the subtle colors using methods he has developed himself - the resulting composition feels like a color mezzotint with its dark blacks and colors modulated with light.

The viewer's eye moves across the surface from door to window, horizontal to vertical, angles to flat spaces. The print sets up a tension with the large black surfaces of the foreground and the angled black building in the background.