Joseph and His Brothers XVIII 1966

Peter Lipman-Wulf made this intaglio print, Joseph and His Brothers XVIII, using an etching technique to create an image of mournful grief in shades of grey. I can imagine Lipman-Wulf bent over a metal plate, carefully drawing with a sharp needle through a waxy ground, each line bitten by acid to hold the ink. Look at the face, those hands raised in despair. You can almost feel the weight of his sorrow. Those tears etched into the plate are like tiny rivers of pain, aren't they? I think the artist captured something universal here. We all know what it is to feel loss. Maybe Lipman-Wulf was thinking of Rembrandt and his etchings? There's a similar empathy for the human condition here, a reaching across time and space to connect with other artists who dared to look unflinchingly at the darker side of life. That’s what art does, it makes us feel less alone.