La Terre d'Or

Paolo Boni

Translating to “the land of gold,” Paolo Boni’s “La Terre d’Or” is an example of the sculptor and painter’s exploration of the relief printmaking method, still relatively new to him in 1960. Having only worked in printmaking since 1954, Boni took to it with ease, and by the late 1950s he was applying his knowledge of metalsmithing to the plate, building textures with metal pieces riveted to the matrix and heavily incised linework. In 1970 as he perfected his technique he began to refer to these pieces as grafi-sculptures.

Here, he uses a deep ochre-yellow to illuminate the composition, which reads as both non representational and architectural, like a doorway, crumbling and cracked to allow in light.