GLENS FALLS, NY.- The Hyde Collection celebrates the works of two innovative printmakers from different eras with the opening of Francisco Goya: The Caprichos Etchings and Aquatints and Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828) was an artist very much at the cusp of two worlds: a medieval world of faith and feudalism, and a modern world of science and reason. He has come to be considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Modern artists.
Using the privilege provided him as portraitist of the monarchy and aristocracy, Goya created a series of etchings that lambasted Spanish life at the end of the eighteenth century. Eighty of those works comprise Francisco Goya: The Caprichos Etchings and Aquatints, which is being exhibited in Wood and Whitney-Renz galleries until April 26.
The Age of Enlightenment that spread renewed hope on much of Europe hadn’t quite reached Spain, so Goya took aim at what he saw as backward thinking: a church that hunted heretics, peasant superstitions, and the upper class’s brutal treatment of the poor. The result is a body of work that skewers the hypocrisies, cruelties, and pretenses of Spanish society in a visual language readily discernible by all who saw it. Bats and cats represented nocturnal and infernal fears; owls were messengers of the gods; and donkeys suggested human frailties.
“Spanish society was still, in some ways, rather medieval,” said Jonathan Canning, The Hyde’s director of curatorial affairs and programming. “Goya bluntly expresses his growing disillusionment. The power of his satire inspired subsequent generations, particularly the French artist Honore Daumier (1808– 1879). Goya’s searing visual critique of contemporary society is considered by many the beginning of modern art.”
Francisco Goya: The Caprichos Etchings and Aquatints was organized by Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions.
The Museum’s second exhibition, Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint, also includes an element of social commentary, this time in early twentieth-century United States.
Years before the Civil Rights Movement forced white Americans to see the disparities between white and black America, Dox Thrash (1893–1965) brought to the nation an inside look at black life in a country torn apart by segregation.
The Hyde offers Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint from January 19 through March 22 in Wood and Hoopes galleries. The exhibition examines the artist’s work portraying life in rural Georgia, urban Philadelphia, World War II, and chronicling the development of black artists and society as the walls of segregation began to crumble.
“It’s unlikely that our Hyde audience will know the name Dox Thrash. But he was part of a movement of social realism that included John Sloan and Rockwell Kent, whom we exhibited recently,” Canning said. “Thrash represented African American life as it was, using everyday subject matter.”
Thrash was born in Georgia, fought in World War I, then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago He settled in Philadelphia, where among a burgeoning black middle class he was the first African American artist to work at the Work Projects Administration’s Fine Print Workshop, the only WPA community center focused exclusively on printmaking.
His exploration of printmaking led to development of the carborundum mezzotint, which allows for creating darker skin tones. In most printmaking, the artist starts with a light surface and creates dark layers. But Thrash did the opposite, starting with a black plate, abrading the surface, and rubbing it down to create lighter grays and whites.
“Carborundum printing gave Thrash the ability to create captivating scenes from his Georgia childhood and his swinging metropolitan Philadelphia adulthood,” Canning said. “He was the black voice in a segregated country. We must celebrate his art so that he does not remain the black voice in a segregated American art history.”
Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint was organized by Dolan/Maxwell.
