The MOLAA Print Exhibit

      This Sunday I went to the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach to view their prints exhibit.  I have attached below many photos of what I found there.  There was a wide variety of artists featured there at the exhibit as well as many printmaking styles including silkscreening, linecut, woodcut, etching, lithograph, serigraph, copper plates, etc.  One artist that was featured more than one time was Oswaldo Guayasamin, an Ecuadorian painter and sculptor who died in 1999.  His prints featured were both etchings on Guarro paper and they were titled; The Hands of Ire and The Hands of Terror.  They are included in the photos below.  The artist came from a family of poverty in Ecuador.  He was the first of ten children and despite working as a Taxi and Truck driver, he graduated from art school as a painter and sculptor and began work as an artist from a relatively young age.  His work became to be influenced by the death of his best friend when he was in college. The prints he has featured here and very simplistic and basic in design.  They are very two dimensional prints of hands that are put together to form other implied images.  One of them has the hands forming an implied face where the other one has the hands expressing more of an emotion of terror, as the print's name suggests, while a very simplistic face is illustrated partially in the background of the hands.  These prints are both black lifework with solid grey forming background shapes and shading.  Etchings like this are created using copper plates that the artist would etch the image on and then use an ink to print the images onto Guarro paper.  The MOLAA Prints Exhibit featured a wide variety of artists and styles, with most artists displaying only one piece each.  I definitely recommend the exhibit.  There was a lot of impressive artwork, especially the wood cuts with all of their detail and to think of the process and all of the work that went into each and every mark.