(abstract figure)

Jacques Herold

Herold’s untitled, small-format etching was printed two ways, relief and intaglio, this impression being the relief version. The composition suggests a velvety black night sky supporting an emerging constellation, a laurel-crowned figure made of stars and distant galaxies.

A move to France in 1930 gave the Romanian-born artist a chance to work at Atelier 17 in Paris alongside leading Surrealists and Modernists who helped shape Herold’s path. By the 1950s his work had taken on a style that outwardly rejected realism but still hinted at the familiar, with delicate, gestural movement that dances around an idea without forcing the viewer’s imagination.