Levitation

Hector Saunier

Evidence of Hayter's Atelier 17 influence is strong in Saunier's color intaglio. Layered patterns of color and line, minutely detailed, highlight the artistic possibility of such a highly technical medium. Saunier now takes part in the current Atelier 17 inception, Atelier Contrepoint.

Saunier is a brilliant technician both with the burin and the color palette. Galerie Michelle Champetier wrote the following on Saunier’s work: The graphic work of Hector Saunier, sophisticated and subtle, is a celebration of the expressive power of line, texture, space and color. Refined and incomparable printer, the artist shows an aesthetic sensibility which is infinitely personal, unlimited imagination playing with colors as a virtuoso musician does with his harmonies. The engraved line of Hector Saunier is bold and spectacular, swirling and dipping into space, always between swelling and shrinking. If the “imagery” is not related to surrealism, his creative process is largely in tune with the surreal automatic design, unconscious sources of creative inspiration. His work is altogether of a [surprising] beauty, poetic and full of mystery.

Hector Saunier, painter and printmaker, was born on 21 February 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After completion of his architectural studies, Saunier departed Argentina for Europe in 1961. He worked for a time in England creating jewelry and metal accessories for the theatre; however, by 1966, he was living in Paris and working at Stanley William Hayter's experimental workshop Atelier 17. Atelier 17 was the powerhouse of creative intaglio printmaking of the twentieth century since its establishment in the late 1920s. Saunier learnt his craft primarily from Hayter and became an assistant at the atelier, working closely with Hayter for the next twenty years. In 1978 he became associate director of the atelier and printed many of Hayter’s later intaglios.

Upon Hayter’s death in 1988, Saunier became co-director with Juan Valladares and the atelier was renamed Atelier Contrepoint, which still flourishes at 10 rue Didot in Paris. Hayter once said of Saunier's prints, “His research in the use of colour in total saturation, the interpenetration of graduated fields of colour not only creates a space of the imagination beyond our normal experience but involves us in another dimension of the consciousness of colour in itself—making us aware of the unsuspected amplitude of one of the most joyful aspects of life.”