Walled City 1957

Juvenal Sansò, a master of mood, made this etching, Walled City, using a painstaking process of scratching into a metal plate. Look at the density of those lines, and the way they seem to grow out of each other organically. There's a wildness to how the ink has been applied, a controlled chaos that mirrors the subject itself. Those blacks aren't just dark, they're heavy, like storm clouds ready to burst! Notice that band of light, just above the horizon line. It's so subtle, like a memory trying to push through the darkness. It's a reminder that even in the most oppressive landscapes, there's always a glimmer of something else. Sansò's prints always remind me of Piranesi's architectural fantasies, where the buildings seem to breathe and shift before your very eyes. In both artists' work, there is an ambiguity that is part of the pleasure.