Landscape: Umbria

Tom Salvatore Fricano

Tom Fricano did this collagraph in Florence, Italy in 1961 while on a Guggenheim Fellowship. He built up a texture with Vinavil liquid polyvinyl acetate on a sheet of matboard. After finishing the Vinavil "painting" he applied ink to the surface and printed it on a 16th century flatbed press. This is the largest print he did using this method and he only did an edition of six.

In "Landscape: Umbria" he has captured the central Italian region known for stone-built towns and villages that wind through vast rolling hillsides. The geography of Umbria is made up in great part of iron oxide and manganese oxide, giving the earth and stone a rich brown hue. Paired with swaths of dark green trees and the turquoise skies seen throughout spring and summer, Ummbria is ripe for artistic inspiration, as seen in Fricano's dramatic imagery.