Farmhouse Trail 2013

Giuliana Lazzerini made this print of a farmhouse trail sometime after 1951, with an eye for purple silhouettes against a pale green and white ground. The process of printmaking involves layering shapes and colors – and it’s cool to think about how each layer has to be carefully planned and executed to bring the image to life. I can imagine her carefully carving into a block, inking it up, and pressing it onto paper, repeating the process with different blocks for each color. You can see how the birds become like musical notes floating on a flat pictorial plane. I wonder if Lazzerini was thinking about other printmakers and painters as she worked? Maybe she saw a work by Bonnard, and decided to use that acidic green in her work. It’s like artists are always in a conversation with each other across time, riffing on each other’s ideas, and making something new. I love how the ambiguity of art allows for multiple interpretations and meanings, like a bird flying freely in the sky.