Fall of Heliodorus

Dennis Ray Beall

Oklahoma born printmaker Dennis Beall began working abstractly with color lithography as a student at San Francisco State College in the early 1950s. A friendship with printmaker John Ihle led him to working in intaglio in the late 1950s. This Abstract Expressionist color intaglio, "Fall of Heliodorus", was done in 1960, using a combination of etching, open-bite etching and aquatint.

The Greek name “Heliodorus” means “Gift of the Sun”. According to literary historian C. L. Warner regarding Heliodorus of Emesa, the 14th century Bishop of Trikka, who wrote the romance novel

‘Æthiopica’ (The Ethiopian Story) before he converted to Christianity:

“Our English—or more generally, our modern novel is the progeny of the Greek romance of Heliodorus. If the self-respecting, simple-minded old bishop could have foreseen the vast concourse of the children of his mind, as numerous as the sands of his native Syria, would he have suppressed it? A legend still preserved leads one to think he would not; for Heliodorus, according to the account, had the courage of his romance-writing. The story says that after some Thessalian young persons, in the fourth century, had been misled to love by this Æthiopica of Heliodorus, the synod of the Church decreed that such amorous and inflaming literature should be committed to the flames, or the author deprived of his bishopric of Tricca. To the glory of Heliodorus, it should be added that he preferred resigning his prelacy to suppressing his genius.”

Beall was registrar at the Oakland Museum of California briefly in 1958 before becoming a curator at the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts in San Francisco, working with Gunter Troche. He held that position until 1965 when he began his teaching career at San Francisco State University where he taught printmaking.