Untitled abstraction

Oscar Dominguez

This early, rare engraving by Surrealist and Atelier 17 printmaker Oscar Dominguez was done in an edition of 20. The impression was printed on a thin sheet of tissue and adhered to a stronger support sheet. There are a couple of barely perceptible creases in the tissue, probably as a result of the printing.

The early work of Oscar Dominguez was greatly influenced by the European Surrealists and Cubists of the 1910s and ‘20s,, and much of his output from the mid 1930s through the late ‘40s grew from both of these sensibilities, dividing his attention between morphed, fantastic dreamscapes and simplified, kinetic shapes that verged on geometric non-representationalism.

When he attended Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in 1936, the latter style became especially pronounced, eventually influencing his painted compositions. This untitled etching of a seated figure, head in hand, is emblematic of this period, highlighting the artist’s interest in stripping away superfluous visual information and focusing instead on creating bold, clean shapes. Executed almost in the way one would approach an ink sketch, the intersections of the lines are emphasized, as if a pen nib rested a beat longer at these crossroads.