Portrait of French-Argentine printmaker Pablo Flaiszman
Pablo Flaiszman is an artist from Buenos Aires in Argentina. He was drawn to art and drawing in childhood, and from the age of 20 trained in painting and drawing with Luisa Reisner, who quickly noticed his talent. In 1997, she introduced him to Alfredo de Vincenzo who taught him the different printmaking techniques. Pablo soon discovered a passion for aqua fortis, which he found gave him great freedom in line drawing, and also aquatint which reminded him of painting with its ability to render areas of even, flat colour. In 2000, he moved to Paris, France. He has been working in his own studio in the 18th arrondissement since 2015.
Until 2010, Pablo Flaiszman mainly concentrated on portraits and self-portraits. After that he started to work on genre scenes inspired by everyday life.
© Pablo Flaiszman, La sieste, 2014, Aqua fortis and aquatint on Velin BFK Rives® Natural paper, 38 × 56 cm
To compose his works, he works from photographs that he takes himself. He places himself in a staged setting or photographs those around him in during private moments. After that, he creates montages of these everyday scenes and recomposes the image with the atmosphere or particular light that inspires him. After manually transferring this composition to the zinc or copper plate, he outlines the main shapes with aqua fortis lines. Then he moves onto the aquatint work, at which he is particularly adept. The successive acid bites allow him to obtain a full range of graded shades, from the light grey to the intense black that make up his palette. His work is a subtle balance of black and white, each revealing the other. The next step consists using a scraper and burnisher to rework the plate to give each area the desired nuances and bring some light back in. The necessary states and trial proofs that precede the bon à tirer are printed on the artist’s own press, but the final print run is entrusted to an intaglio printer.
© Pablo Flaiszman, Fontaine de jouvence, 2018, Soft ground etching-aquatint on Velin BFK Rives® Natural paper, 76×57 cm
The large aquatints composed by the Argentine artist form a series of black and white pictures which you can instinctively tell are the work of a painter won over by the magic of printmaking. Today Pablo Flaiszman is major award-winning figure in contemporary printmaking with numerous exhibitions in many different places to his name.
© Pablo Flaiszman, Sobremesa, 2013, Aqua fortis-aquatint on Velin BFK Rives® Natural paper, 76×56 cm
