Gezicht op Venetië 1930

Here is Ferdinand Luigini’s 'View of Venice,' made with a needle and acid on a copper plate. The whole scene pulses with a silvery grey light. He’s scratched and bitten at the plate, pulling the image out of it, a little like memory. I imagine him, perhaps, standing in the square, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the essence of the place. He’s focusing on the light, how it hits the buildings, the hustle of the crowds. The architecture looms, while the figures in the foreground are like dark smudges. They’re there, but they’re also not there, just part of the city’s fabric. It's hard not to think of Whistler and the other etchers of the time. Like them, Luigini finds a poetics in the everyday. And it makes me think about how each of us, as artists, are in an ongoing dialogue, borrowing, responding, and transforming what we see and feel. It’s all one big conversation.