cover image From Pissarro to Picasso: Color Etching in France: Works from the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Zimmerli Art Museum

From Pissarro to Picasso: Color Etching in France: Works from the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Zimmerli Art Museum

Phillip Dennis Cate. Zimmerli Art Museum, $50 (198pp) ISBN 978-2-08-013538-4

Appealing, intimate and arresting, the color prints made in France between 1873 and 1914 revolutionized what had been a black-and-white medium. This revelatory volume documents a noteworthy exhibition at Rutgers University, which will travel to Amsterdam and Paris. Standouts among the 175 color plates include Mary Cassatt's luminous studies of women, Alfredo Muller's symbolist and expressionist portraits, Charles Maurin's seductive females in decorated boudoirs, Joaquin Sunyer's powerfully realistic depictions of the disadvantaged, and works by Camille Pissarro, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Eugene Delatre and Picasso. In their engaging text, Cate, director of Rutgers's Zimmerli Art Museum, and French art historian Grivel make a strong case that as etching and color invigorated each other, enabling artists to obtain new effects, color printmaking became an active, influential movement in its own right. (Dec.)