A Word from the Wise by Ian Hugo

A Word from the Wise by Ian Hugo

A Word from the Wise

Ian Hugo

Title

A Word from the Wise

 
Artist

Ian Hugo

  1898 - 1985 (biography)
Year
1944  
Technique
engraving 
Image Size
8 3/4 x 6" platemark 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
11/XXX 
Annotations
titled, lower center; dated after signature 
Reference
 
Paper
ivory wove 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
19342 
Price
SOLD
Description

Hugo used a burin to "draw" directly on the surface of the copper plate. The composition itself evokes many emerging surreal, dreamlike images. An African giraffe and oasis palm tree are in conversation with a Sonoran desert suguaro cactus and a stylized Aztec quetzal bird. Small human stick figures climb on the cactus.

Ian Hugo was born Hugh Parker Guiler in Boston, Massachusetts on February 15, 1898. His childhood was spent in Puerto Rico (a "tropical paradise") the memory of which stayed with him and surfaced in both his engravings and his films, but he attended school in Scotland and graduated from Columbia University where he studied economics and literature.

He was working with the National City Bank when he met and married author Anais Nin in 1923. They moved to Paris the following year where Nin's diary and Guiler's artistic aspirations flowered. Guiler feared his business associates would not understand his interests in art and music, let alone those of the controversial Anais, so he began a second life as 'Ian Hugo'. Ian and Anais moved to New York in 1939. The following year he took up engraving and etching, working at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, established at the New School for Social Research.

Hugo was one the the early printmakers to help establish the Atelier 17 in New York with Hayter, who he had known in Paris. Hugo wanted to learn engraving so he could illustrate Anais Nin's books which they were self publishing, unable to find a publisher willing to take a chance.

Hugo began producing the surreal images that often accompanied Nin's books. For Nin his unwavering love and financial support were indispensable, Hugo was "the fixed center, core...my home, my refuge" (Sept. 16, 1937, Nearer the Moon, The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1937-1939). A fictionalized portrait of Hugo appears in Philip Kaufman's 1990 film, Henry & June.