Prophetic Baptism

William Ashby McCloy

When Mauricio Lasansky came to the University of Iowa in 1945 he brought with him the experimental intaglio techniques and teaching methods he had learned at Atelier 17 in New York, encouraging his students to experiment and use their failures as a basis for a new composition, continuing to push the copper plates.

One of his early students, William A. McCloy, used a variety of these techniques including etching, engraving, soft-ground, scraping and multiple, hand wiped color plates to arrive at the final composition. The subject relates to the biblical baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, a serpent twists around a tree and an amorphous blue spirit forms in the upper center. In the foreground are fish that seem to be entwined in the soft-ground netlike garb and at the right are two figures in attendence.

This print features the artist's inked handprint on the verso, and an ink fingerprint in the margin, with paper tape in the upper margin, all commonly found on the works of Lasansky's students and the effect of his particular way of "flipping" and drying the prints.