Eaux Fortes Suite

LeRoy Neiman is at ease with many media. Most of his early years were spent painting and drawing. He explored a number of art-in-multiples techniques, but was not entirely satisfied with the first results.  His tentative experiments with monotypes and lithographs in the 1950s and 60s were followed by his passionate love affair with serigraphs in the 1970s. The technique of serigraphy made his sensuously controlled explosions of color available to a very wide audience. It was not until he had published over a hundred limited editions of serigraphs in an orgy of painterly creativity that he begun to feel an attraction for the firm discipline of the etcher’s art. His first etchings were done as learning experiments in Switzerland during 1971. The methodology intrigued him. In 1972, he produced several suites of sports subjects – baseball, skiing, hockey, basketball and boxing. During those early years he worked with various techniques that ranged from aquatint to hand pulled photo-etching. Then he set the etching process aside for a few years.

Late in 1975, he felt the itch to etch again. He bought his own press, and set it up in his New York studio. From that point on, Neiman’s etchings started to become deeply personal expressions. The first suite off the press was a series of nudes, followed by moving studies of people and animals working together in a special kind of natural harmony. the period between 1977 and 1978 marks the mature development of Neiman’s work as an etcher. Since that time all of his etchings have been worked on the various metals in his etching studio. Each image originated as a direct line drawing through a hard ground which was then etched. After the first state proof is pulled, Neiman usually reworks the plate using such techniques as aquatint, dry point, and scraping. Each time the plate is reworked, a state proof is pulled until the artist is satisfied with the image. All of the impressions for each edition are then inked and hand pulled by his printer under Neiman’s direction in the etching studio.