Returning a Star to the Sky

Tom Salvatore Fricano

"Returning a Star to the Sky" was done in 1953 while Tom Fricano was at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. The early 1950s printmaking departments around the US were either directly or indirectly influenced by S.W. Hayter's experimental printmaking workshop Atelier 17 in New York in the 40s and 50s. Many students went on to teach the ideas of materials experimentation that was an A17 hallmark.

Fricano used a single masonite block to cut this Modernist image, printing the colors a la poupeé in a single campaign, the colors varying slightly from impression to impression. The theme has a surrealist, mythic quality; a central goddess-like figure stands, with the seas beneath, the night sky to the left and day sky to the right, with a grey-green twilight above. She releases a star into the night sky which will come into view as night falls.