The Higher-ups Backstage (Grand Opera 1932)

Gerald Geerlings

Milwaukee, Wisconsin born Gerald Kenneth Geerlings was trained as an architect prior to pursuing printmaking, which was not an uncommon start for many printmakers at the time. He worked with the medium, beginning with lithography, in two periods: first between 1926 and 1933, and again after 1975.

This drypoint was done a year after he began intaglio, which he learned at the Royal College of Art in London. It depicts the backstage of a large theater where the curtains, drapes and backdrops are raised and lowered using ropes and weights. Geerlings indicates that this is backstage at the Grand Opera House in Chicago, at 8 p.m.

The composition has abstract elements, as the ropes and riggings soar up to infinity. At the base of the rigging, men carefully manipulate the weights so that production changes on the other side of the curatin, witnessed by the audience, occur seamlessly.