Baer-Carnera
Robert Riggs American
Not on view
Prizefighting was highly popular in the U.S. during the first decades of the twentieth century and a recurring subject in Riggs’s oeuvre. Here, Riggs captured a moment of tension during the 1934 world heavyweight championship at the short-lived Madison Square Garden Bowl (1932–42) in Long Island City, Queens, during which Max Baer defeated Primo Carnera for the title. Riggs treated the boxing ring like a dramatically lit stage set, which he achieved through his unusual method of printmaking. To create his lithographs, Riggs applied a subtractive method, working from dark to light rather than the other way around, drawing on a limestone surface with a black lithographic crayon and removing the grease by rubbing the surface or scraping it with a razor blade.
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