Night-Time in the City

Earl Klein

Earl Klein’s career in art was split definitively in two halves: one, as an animator who worked with nearly every major animation studio in the U.S.; the other, as a fine artist who experimented with printmaking techniques and watercolor. Stylistically the two halves of Klein’s career were separate, and his work in Abstract Expressionism - at the height of printmaking’s 20th century pioneering period - is that of an innovator and explorer.

In “Night-Time in the City” he has constructed a shadowy urban world that is open to interpretation. A mix of residential and industrial structures could be viewed from the vantage point of a skyscraper penthouse, or observed along on the edge of a bay or river whose glossy surface reflects the lights of nocturnal life. Klein explores the possibilities of the plate with feathery shapes and textures using open-bite aquatint, heavily layered to recreate the intimate sprawl of a metropolis.