Marcel Fiorini

Marcel Fiorini , born in 1922 in Algeria, is a figurative painter Non French of the news École of Paris particularly recognized for its work engraved and the new processes of Gravure in copper-plate engraving on wood, linoleum or plaster which it developed and used starting from the Années 1950.

Biography

Marcel Fiorini is born on February 23rd, 1922 with Guelma (Algeria). He starts in 1938 to paint and carry out tests of engraving by using the acids and the products of the pharmacy of his father to manufacture varnishes according to the receipts of an old pharmaceutical code. After studies with the college of Bône (Annaba) where it binds with Marcel Bouqueton it attends of 1940 to 1942 the School of the Art schools of Algiers. It meets there Louis Nallard and Maria Manton with which it arrives to France in 1947.

Installed initially in the Paris region then in Paris, Fiorini shares the friendship of Roger Chastel and Roger Bissière for which it realizes from 1952 of engravings of interpretation, like for Jean Bertholle, Mark Tobey, Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, Jacques Villon. In 1953 it illustrates the Rose of Vérone , poem of Jean Lescure whose text is included in Thirteen poems. According to the gouaches of Bissière it engraves into 1954 the images and the text of the “Canticle to the sun” of Saint François d' Assise from which it draws itself all the tests. For Jacques Villon it engraves the illustrations of Laus Veneris of Swinburne in 1956, of Teeth baby, wolf's teeth of Henri Pichette in 1959, of Ajournement of André of Bouchet in 1960.

Taking part in the Living room of New Realities as from 1948, in the Living room of May and the exposures of the Young contemporary engraving, Fiorini receives for its painting in 1952 the price Felix Fénéon, in 1954 the price of the Dome, 1955 the price of Biennial of Chin and for its engravings a Price with Biennial of Sao Paulo. It exposes regularly to the gallery Jeanne Bucher of 1953 to 1970 like in Switzerland and Germany, and takes part in many collective exposures in Europe, in the USA, in Japan and in Latin America. “Engraved Work” publishes as from 1956 the majority of its engravings.

Fiorini carried thereafter out objects of porcelain decoration for the national Manufacture of Sevres as well as a series of twelve firebacks illustrating the signs of the Zodiaque for the Foundries of Cousances-the-Forging mills and taught engraving with the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the Art schools of Paris.

Work

The importance of Marcel Fiorini in the developments of engraving in second half of the 20th century is due to the new processes that he invents, wood, linoleum or plaster in the soft face, and with the richness of expression which they allow.

Two forms of traditional engraving

The oldest way of engraving, used at the first times of the " incunables" but practiced since antiquity for the decoration of fabrics, the realization of the seals or the card decks, is the “relief engraving” or “size of saving”, practiced in general on wood (“Xylographie”), which opened the way with the engraving of the typographical characters. After inking “reserves”, i.e. the hollows notched on the plate, let appear with pulling whiteness paper while the flat tints, remained in relief, saved and encrées surfaces defer the black to it. The process is simple but the possibilities to vary the values remain open quasi non-existent. The “Taille-douce” is the manner of printing which is specific to the contrary process of the “die stamping”, inherited of the Italian goldsmiths of Quatrocento. In this technique “sizes”, i.e. the hollows notched on the metal plate with the Graver, the Drypoint or by the processes of the Etching and the Aquatinte (by bite with the acids), retain, after inking with the plug and the wiping with the muslin, the ink which wet paper comes to drink, “rolled” under the very strong pressure of a press with rollers. In the tradition as in the revival of engraving appeared starting from the Années 1930 it is the metal used in copper-plate engraving which dominates, allowing all subtleties in the animation of the feature and the variety of the values, work in relief of wood being marginalized.

Xylography and linogravure in copper-plate engraving

Fiorini, after having used the aquatinte, rather quickly color, and to be themselves initiated with the work of printer, pulling being for him one moment as important as engraving, realizes as from 1952 the new synthesis of the use of wood (in thin plywood boards of pear tree, oak, walnut tree or okoumé) and of the technique of impression of the soft size. Contrary to the relief engraving they are values and not white which are dug in wood, absorbent and restoring on paper more or less ink according to whether it is more or less varnished or polished. In the new process that it develops, the combinations of flat tints and more or less deep hollows allow a very large variety of the transparencies and opacities. It is in addition possible to the engraver to plastically draw party in its work from the marblings and textures of fibers of material. “The superiority of wood is still checked for engraving color”, analyzes Fiorini in 1953: “it is a perfect support of the color. Not only the chemical reactions caused by any metal not aciéré are avoided, but wood generally allows a tone much purer than metal.” (city by Roger Van Gindertael, Fiorini , 1965). As of this Fiorini time not only ink thus directly its boards of several colors but still adapts its technique to the linoleum (Linogravure) which, by its flexibility, multiplies the possibilities of incision and expression. Whereas in its aquatintes and its engravings on wood, generally verticals, the purified layouts suggest in a very allusive way dead natures and human figures, the horizontal space of its linogravures opens rather on a broad series of nonfigurative landscapes.

An entirely engraved book

As from 1959 Fiorini extends its processes to the realization of an entirely engraved book, an Herbarium of the dunes , which represents a synthesis of its former innovations and is at the origin of its later research. Its initial intention is “to bind together wood and linos in hollow, printed in the soft face, and a poetic text integrated into engraving, thus forming an uninterrupted continuation, an arabesque going of the beginning at the end of the book”, which supposes “the impression on the two faces of the sheet in order to avoid the rupture of a white page to the back of engraving”. Fiorini exposes this project to his/her friend the poet Jean Lescure “who impassioned and immediately specified the topic and the place: topic, the plant, of the sea and the ground, the alga to the vine while passing by the species which at the same time separate them and join together them “, written Fiorini in the note accompanying the presentation by the book. With the two summers length to the Ile de Ré are formed at the same time “the words and the images”. In 1962 Fiorini engraves 20 boards thus, i.e. 40 pages which integrate the worms of the poem of Jean Lescure in their plastic composition where are registered at the same time the free reminiscences of the forms or the matters of the plant and the nonfigurative elements of the landscape of the shores. Into the continuation of its engravings Fiorini introduces moreover one temporal dimension, the book developing in a general progression of obscure towards the lights of the rising of the day. It finds then the means of carrying out for each sheet of paper, by avoiding embossing, the four passages under the press necessary to the recto-back impression of the images (on linoleum boards) and of the text (on copper boards, also comprising part of engraving). The book, single in the history of engraving, is exposed by the gallery Jeanne Bucher in 1964 and the poem will be included in the collection Drailles in 1968. Parallel to its long realization the stays of Fiorini in the Ile de Ré are at the origin of a major succession of boards (in particular Varech , Algues , the Saltworks , the Marsh , Nacre , the Beach , the Dune with the vines ) around the same “Atlantic” topics.

Gypsography in copper-plate engraving

Beyond wood and Fiorini linoleum uses as from 1963 the plaster, while it returning less breaking by the addition of plastic adhesives (vinyl, polyester) which give him a certain elasticity and all the possible handlings allow some. “The richness of use of such a material, which can be built, to run themselves, be moulded or stamp themselves when it is still fresh, and to grow hollow, to scrape itself, to cut itself, when it is hard, is limited only by the only requirements of the impression in copper-plate engraving”, notes it. To this richness of the plaster, likely of all the formal determinations, a new immediacy of the expression is added in which is removed any execution time or any intermediary. It is mainly in this process (“gypsography in copper-plate engraving”) that Fiorini will carry out its later engravings. In 1964 it takes again its intention to introduce the duration into its album the Seasons which it differently carries out starting from one only board engraved on linoleum with plaster superstructures, printed eight times, the diversity of the colors recreating for each time of the year a light of the morning and another of the evening.

Panoramic engravings

In its Engravings for the hours , exposed to the Jeanne gallery To rough-hew in 1965, Fiorini continues in another way its project of integrating in its works temporality. These eleven engravings, eight horizontal in form of " makémono" and three verticals in form of " kakémono" , have for the majority more than two meters, and never the history of engraving did not know prints of so exceptional size, which “was not, in truth, practicable if, once again, Fiorini had not imagined and had carried out processes making it possible to exceed the standards, as well in the paper formats as for the passage under press”, underlines Roger Van Gindertael ( Fiorini , 1965). In the clean distance to the engraving, which attracts with oneself the glance until in detail of its matter, it is necessary to perceive these works to traverse them in the duration and not of only one glance. It is thus a kind of visual voyage among nonfigurative landscapes which they propose, Fiorini approaching beyond the whole of the topics which temporal dimension enables him to suggest, since a homage to the Wave of Hokusai to the allusive processions of the King Rene or of the Travelling entertainers . As in its former album, Fiorini presents several of its boards according to pullings different which evoke the ranges essential of the light with the length of the day and the year, some of them by recreating from one edge to the other the succession by insensitive passages.

Engravings for the wall

The monumental character of this continuation is accentuated in the eleven Gravures for the wall , six engraved by Fiorini and five by Louttre B., that the two artist engravers realize and present in 1970 to the gallery Jeanne Bucher. “It is simple to make engravings of two meters out of three. No difficulty, if it is not that nothing exists with these dimensions: neither material, nor materials. However, by the width of its work and the richness of its matter, the wood engraved in hollow calls the wall.” they write then, summarizing how it had them necessary to produce for pulling a sufficiently broad press and to develop sheets of paper with dimensions necessary. “They are monumental engravings there, for the first time at dimensions of a tapestry. (…) The language even of engraving receives an extension, knows a decisive release. Where painting goes, engraving can go: it is not reduced so that, in modest dimensions, the black and the white can seize. Engraving can say all that painting says, if she says differently.” analyzes in its foreword Gaetan Picon.

Through its use of new materials and its development in the mural field the work of Fiorini appears thus, near those of Jean Fautrier or Raoul Ubac, Johnny Friedlaender, Stanley Hayter, Henri-Georges Adam, Vieillard or Courtin, among most significant of the change which released the engraving of any subordination to the drawing or painting and, having engaged it in the recognition of its specific means, ensured whole the autonomy of its expression.

Judgments

“If a great number of artists make, today, of engraving, rather incidentally and with more or less of success, very little of them deserve to be called really engraver. Marcel Fiorini, him, on the esthetic level as in the area of the technology, is one of the rare Masters engravers of the new French School. (…) It is a will of personal expression in the order of the esthetic concerns most current which precisely directed all its research and caused all its material innovations.”

Roger Van Gindertael, Fiorini, Engravings for the hours , Jeanne gallery To rough-hew, Paris, 1965.

“Fiorini, indeed, is not only one engraver, he is also a painter of quality and for him the two modes of expression are indissolubly dependant. They repercussion constantly one on the other. From there the so personal nature of this engraved work where the orthodoxe means are not always respected, where the invention and freedom reign constantly, where new means as the attack in hollow of the wood plate give unexpected results.”

Roger Bissière, Fiorini , in do not make of it You the Marie, Écrits on painting 1945-1954 , Editions time that it makes, Cognac, 1994.

Selective bibliography

Roger Van Gindertael, a novel method of engraving on wood, proposed by Fiorini , in International Artistic Topicality , Paris, June 6th, 1953.
Fiorini , foreword of Roger Bissière, Schmücking gallery, Brunswick (Germany), 1961.
Fiorini, Engravings for the hours , foreword of Roger Van Gindertael, Jeanne gallery To rough-hew, 1965.
Fiorini , University off Kentucky art gallery, retrospective foreword of Roger Van Gindertael, the United States, 1965.
Fiorini/Louttre, Engravings for the wall , foreword of Gaetan Picon, Jeanne gallery To rough-hew, Paris, 1970.
Guy Marester, Fiorini, capacities of copper-plate engraving , in Ogee moulding , n°113-114 original of Fiorini, Paris, September-December 1973.

Internal bond

nonfigurative Painting

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