Night Sky 1 (Reversed)

Various artists/makers

Not on view

Celmins’s oeuvre is characterized by an embrace of formal and technical challenges and by a rich and prolonged engagement with a limited group of subjects. Central among these motifs is a star-filled night sky, shown tightly cropped and at a slight angle. Instead of dramatic black-and-white contrasts, in Night Sky 1 (Reversed) the dark sky becomes an expansive white field against which black flecks create a vast, horizonless constellation that fills the picture plane. Framing this nearly abstract work is a thin outline that mirrors the impression left by the etching plate and acts as a double border directing attention inward.

Night Sky 1 (Reversed), Vija Celmins (American, born Riga, Latvia, 1938), Three-color photoetching, aquatint, photogravure, and drypoint

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