Myshi Mice
By Leo Tolstoy
Barcelona, Spain: KooBook, 2009. Second Edition of 32.
8.5 x 10.25"; 8 unnumbered pages. Hand printed on Somerset paper. Linoleum block and stone lithography. Sicars paper. Sewn into illustrated wraparound of heavy stock with translation on inside back flap. Signed and numbered. Edition of 32: 16 in English; 16 in Spanish. Translation by the artist.
Valeria Brancaforte: “The First Edition (1990) was made at the Civico Corso di Arti Incisorie on Sicars paper in Milan (Italy) and blocks were carved on linoleum only.
“The Second Edition (2009) was printed in collaboration with Taller Esquina on Somerset paper, Barcelona (Spain). I used the same linoleum blocks obviously, but I had to turn to stone lithography to ‘restore’ some plates time had actually torn. In fact, all the lino blocks were glued on wooden blocks in 1990, which actually bended over 19 years, so I just couldn't re-use some of them and had to reproduce the plates in some way (stone lithography).”
A short fable illustrating that a plan is nice, but a plan put into action is nicer - and more difficult.
Valeria Brancaforte: "Poetry, literature and foreign languages - if not language itself - has always been a necessary nourishment, an indispensable complement, the starting and ending point of my artistic vision. I have always been drawing and doing art: among the reasons why I decided to make of Slavic studies my cultural background, was a deep fascination with typographic aspects of the Cyrillic alphabet, beyond wanting to discover the meaning beyond those semantic symbols.
"When I realized my first limited edition book (Mice) based on a text by Lev Tolstoy, which I myself translated into Italian, I discovered how the woodcut technique not only permitted me to harmoniously combine a text with illustrations, but also to carve - and translate - a text devoting all the time and dedication each word requires: it was the perfect medium for me to express the twofold task highlighting the visual magic and the semantic valence of the word."
$500 |
