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Artist Robert R. Ecker (American, 1936-)

Date1978

Mediummezzotint

Dimensionsimage: 4 × 4 in. (10.2 × 10.2 cm)
sheet: 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm)
mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Nause

Exhibition History"Passion on Paper: Masterly Prints from the KIA Collection," March 17 - July 15, 2018, Groos Gallery.Label Text"Ecker presents countless clever visual pleasures in this miniature masterpiece. He plays the glass marble against the reflective qualities of the tabletop and the metal canister. His ability to convey the splashes of light on the many indentations of the canister is a tour-de-force in itself, but he also has fun portraying space. We read depth by the placement of the pencil in the foreground and the little triangle of light along the right edge of the image suggesting a receding floor-line. Ecker was self-taught. He worked small because each of his many images in mezzotint was a step toward mastering the technique. The print may also be small because the process is so difficult and time-consuming. Mezzotint is an old, labor-intensive process prized for its rich tonal range. Prints are made by working from dark to light. A metal plate is first roughed-up very evenly with specialized tools. Then the artist scrapes his image into this surface. The more any area is scraped, the lighter it will print because that area will hold less ink than more textured parts of the plate (written by Nancy Sojka for Passion on Paper: Masterly Prints from the KIA Collection, 2018)."

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