Framed Colour Etching, Pils Rouge 1974, Arthur Luiz Piza (1928–2017)

Arthur Luiz Piza (1928–2017)
Plis Rouge, 1974
Color etching, signed and numbered
Copy 41/99
Sheet: ca. 57 × 75 cm
Framed behind glass: ca. 66 × 94 cm
The Brazilian painter and graphic artist Arthur Luiz Piza was one of the most important representatives of abstract painting and printmaking after the Second World War. In the 1950s, he moved from Brazil to Paris, studied drawing with Johnny Friedländer and maintained contact with the Latin American art scene of the geometric constructivists.
Plis Rouge shows Piza's mature graphic language at its most refined: a cluster of angular, folded planes, each rendered in a different woven texture, in a warm palette of ochre, russet, blue and grey against a charcoal ground. The interlocking geometry reflects his ties to constructivist abstraction, while the dense, hand-worked line and tactile surface reveal the lyrical, painterly sensibility that set his prints apart.