Visitation While Herod Searches

 

David Fraiser Driesbach

  1922 - 2019 (biography)

1957  

mixed technique intaglio with etching, aquatint and softground 

17 3/4 x 23 3/4" platemark 

pencil signed, lower right 

27 of 30  

pencil titled lower left; "impr" after signature; dated 

 

heavy, toothy cream laid 

published 

artist 

DD124 

$600.00 

David Driesbach studied printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at Iowa between 1948 and 1951, getting both his BFA and his MFA there. He also spent two stints at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17, once after he was discharged from the marines in 1945, and once in Paris, in 1969. Driesbach almost always included a self portrait in his compositions, usually in a stove-pipe hat, often with self deprecating humor, always the observer of the human condition. Driesbach commented on his imagery: "My work is autobiographical. It is about my present and my past - awake and in dreams. My compulsion is to relive events, whether they be mundane, hilarious, frightening, curious, or beautifully fascinating. These images I view as happenings, plays, or stories with unique settings, times and plots. In the etching "Visitation..." Driesbach combines a surreal landscape and various intaglio techniques to create a dream-like fantasy composition based on an imaginary visitation to King Herod's home while Herod is off searching for Jesus Christ, the artist, holding a lit candle, confronts chaos and destruction filled with symbolic images, such as the mother and child in the large egg-shaped structure. For more information on the artist, please see our biography, above.