Title: Dutch iris
Medium: Monotype 1 colour etching & aquatint in 17 colours
Signed and dated: 1993
Unframed: 120cm x 80cm
Framed: 160cm x 120cm
“You may start with a charcoal drawing of an iris flower but at some stage the copper and acid or the acrylic sheet and the engraving tools impose their own scenario much as characters in a play or film” – William Kentridge (Simmons 2018:1).
Dutch Iris, is a single copper-plate liftground aquatint with multiple colour inking a la poupee.
David Krut, who published these prints, commented that it has “a spacious Japanese feel” rather different from Kentridge’s drawing-bound prints. The artwork was conceived by Kentridge as a four-plate print: drypoint on acrylic and three aquatinted copper plates. It finally ended up as the black printed acrylic plate, printed between the two lift-ground aquatints like a sandwich. This formula was arrived at after much proofing, wet on wet, and many colour trials. The result was a dramatic image which has all the dynamism of drawing with all the painterly qualities of rich colour (Simmons 2018:1).
