Embrassement

Gail Singer

Gail Singer employed numerous intaglio processes with her print Embrassement, including softground etching and aquatint. Flat, broad orange shapes float above and below a network of squares that undulate across much of the surface elongating or contracting as they are manipulated on the plate. Her work was technically difficult and original.

In 1975, Atelier 17 founder Stanley William Hayter praised her work: "The work of Gail Singer is far from reassuring: its violent, shocked structures reflect our world…. Her work, both violent and moving, is the direct emanation of intuition and instinct. Her sense of color is unique: it is an integral part of the work and not a way of enhancing or adorning the image. Her strange, bewitching, obsessive constructions are linked to an element, unacknowledged perhaps, but absolutely authentic of our psyche. I admire Gail Singer's art for its truth, its strength, and its prodigious visual power."

Gail Singer was born in Galveston, Texas on November 8, 1924. She was a graduate of the Mirabeau B. Lamar High School in Houston, Texas and, from 1946 to 1950, she studied fine arts at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. Singer was awarded the John T. Miliken Fellowship that allowed her to travel and study in Europe in 1952. She settled in Paris in 1955, working at Atelier 17 under Paul Buelin and Stanley William Hayter until the close of the 1960s. She remained in Paris for the rest of her life.

Singer worked in the intaglio process creatively combining the techniques of etching, engraving, aquatint, open bite, and viscosity. She also worked in relief, printing the surface of her matrix be it a metal, wood, or linoleum plate.