Alone - from the "Black is Beautiful" suite

 

Michel Mathonnat

  1944 - PRESENT (biography)

1972  

aquatint with etching 

14 3/8 x 18 3/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

52 of 175  

editioned; embossed chops of Transworld Art in lower left corner of the paper 

 

ivory Rives BFK wove 

published 

Transworld Art 

19465 

$400.00 

American publisher Alex Rosenberg discovered Mathonnat's work in 1970 and the following year commissioned a suite of nine intaglios to accompany the poem "Black Woman" by Léopold Sédar Senghor; the suite was titled "Black is Beautiful." This led to Mathonnat's recurring theme of nudes presented in a state of solitude, which later translated into his sculptures as well. This impression, the seventh image of the series of nine, 52/175, was used to illustrate the suite on Mathonnat's website, michelmathonnat.blogspot.com. The published edition of 175 had eight images and the preferred edition of 25 had a ninth print. Mathonnet began working in bronze in 1975, traveling to Bologna to apprentice at the Venturi Arte foundry. He also began establishing himself as an illustrator at this time, both publishing and printing various art books in collaboration with poets. Wikipedia notes: "Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist who, for two decades, served as the first president of Senegal between 1960 and 1980. Ideologically an African socialist he was the major theoretician of Négritude. Senghor was also the founder of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc party. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. He won the 1985 International Nonino Prize in Italy. He is regarded by many as one of the most important African intellectuals of the 20th century.