Still-life with Asparagus and Lemon
Mezzotint is a Northern European print tradition dating from its invention in the mid-17th century and was used in the following two centuries primarily as a means of reproducing paintings as black and white prints. Yozo Hamaguchi’s exclusive use of this print technique grew out of his study of painting and various printmaking methods during his first years in Paris in the early 1930s. Hamaguchi approached this intaglio print technique―in which the recesses of lines etched into a metal plate are filled with ink to produce the resulting image during printing―with new insight, developing its possibilities for fine gradated tonal values.
This artist’s finely tuned sensibility for placement of compositional elements and for limiting his range of subject, coloration, and scale makes his prints both specific and universal. The mood is one of intensity, restraint, and magical quiet. In other mezzotints, Hamaguchi introduced color, which looms out of the rich, velvet blacks that dominate the compositions.
