Silent Eclectic Fish Tattoo

A proponent of Surrealism and of highly individualist and experimental approaches to the medium of etching, Vera Berdich founded the etching department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947 upon her graduation from the SAIC and revived etching as a printmaking major. With the return of American soldiers from World War II and the increased demand to work with print media, an explosive period in Chicago printmaking began. Until her retirement in 1979, several post-war generations learned to hone their techniques under her demanding tutelage, including many artists referred to as Chicago Imagists. This etching was composed with three of her students, according to the Surrealist game called the Exquisite Corpse, during which one person begins a drawing, passes it to the next person who continues the work, and so on. (The classic example from which the game receives its name is the following sentence: “The exquisite—corpse—shall drink—the young—wine.") Artists who participated in Hairy Who and False Image exhibitions extended the unpredictable expressive possibilities of this game of chance into an egalitarian way to advertise their group exhibitions by featuring it in exhibition posters, invitations, postcards and catalogs. (See Smart Museum 2001.577, 2001.583-584, 2001.586a, and 2001.581.)