The Mezzotint Collection

André Berger, for the exhibition "Grassmann and the collections from Unicamp's Department of Drawings and Prints", September 2022.

The Mezzotint Collection in Unicamp's Department of Drawings and Prints was composed of works from the International Mezzotint Exhibition, that took place in 2019 at the Institute of Arts, a realization of the Department, the IA Art Gallery and the Printmaking Laboratory (with the support of Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES, PROEC, PPG AV-IA, MAV, LABgravura and Seção de Programação Visual - IA).

The mezzotint – or black manner – is the main procedure I use in the production of my personal work with intaglio, at the time the focus of my master's research and, currently, of the doctoral research that I develop in the Post-graduate Program in Visual Arts from Unicamp's Institute of Arts.

The idea of ​​holding an event that would had an international exhibition of prints as main attraction, with this specific technical approach and built through an open call for participation, was inspired by the International Mezzotint Festival in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

One of the rules of the selection process, disclosed within the open call for inscriptions, determined that the works selected for participation in the International Mezzotint Exhibition should be donated to the collection of Unicamp's Department of Drawings and Prints. Having received entries from 46 artists, the commission selected 72 works by 34 artists from 22 countries.

In addition to the selected works, the exhibition included prints by two guest artists, Nori Figueiredo and Rubens Matuck, and by a hors-concours, Marcio Périgo. The event also featured lectures and demonstrations by the guest artists, printmakers with a relevant work in mezzotint in Brazil.

Within the deliberately limited scope that we proposed, we were faced with a surprising diversity of styles and themes, with particularities in the execution of the prints. The mezzotint, created in 1642, was a technological innovation for the reproduction of paintings and portraits that soon became obsolete, but continued to be practiced without this function, even if by a small group of persistent printmakers. We gathered prints that show us different approaches to this intaglio procedure, worldwide, today.

In June 2022, we launched the digital catalog of the Exhibition, with reproductions of the works and presentation texts that further detail its construction process.

If this catalog publishing, even if digital, already allows the panorama of contemporary production in mezzotint presented by the Exhibition to have a wide and easy reach, the presence of the originals in the collection of the Department of Drawings and Prints, accessible for consultation, appreciation and research, keeps the International Mezzotint Exhibition available at the State University of Campinas for a deeper look.