E.050 Plaça Ramon Berenguer el Gran, Barcelona 1991

• I. 1st and only state

  Drypoint. View onto a city square with a low, winding wall at left, at the end of which is an equestrian statue of a ruler, facing left. In the centre foreground stands a cypress, and there is a row of four other cypresses in the distance. To the right is a wall, irregular in profile, with conspicuous protrusions.

  State impression not sighted.

• Edition, 1991

  Variable edition of five numbered impressions, on white and cream wove BFK Rives papers (according to Amor’s intaglio record books), printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[1 through 5]/5’; lower centre: ‘Placa Ramon Berenguer el Gran Barc.’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’91’.

  Edition sheet size: 376 x 382 mm

• Edition impression, 1991 (Featured Image)

  

  Drypoint. View onto a city square with a low, winding wall at left, at the end of which is an equestrian statue of a ruler, facing left. In the centre foreground stands a cypress, and there is a row of four other cypresses in the distance. To the right is a wall, irregular in profile, with conspicuous protrusions.

• Comment

  The Plaça de Ramon Berenguer el Gran is a public square in Barcelona, located in the city’s medieval quarter, near the Palau Reial and the Roman walls. The square is named after the twelfth-century Catalan hero Count Ramon Berenguer III, called The Great (1082–1131), whose bronze monument is situated there. The original monument was made in 1880 by Josep Llimona i Bruguera (1864–1934); it was replaced in 1950 with a replica by Frederic Marès (1893–1991). It is the later monument that is seen at the far left of E.050.

  In 1991 Amor spent three months, from June to September, in Barcelona, having been awarded an Australia Council Visual Arts/Craft Board grant to live and work at the VACB’s Barcelona studio. E.050 is the first of four intaglio prints resulting from that period. It is based on a drawing and a watercolour made on the spot, but with the orientation reversed in printing.

  Amor’s use of drypoint here is direct and summary, conveying a feeling of immediacy akin to that found in a sketch, and is quite unlike the method he employed in Cypresses, Barcelona (cat. no. E.051), which is a carefully etched depiction of the very same scene, though in reverse direction.

  For Amor’s other intaglio prints depicting Barcelona subjects, see cat. nos E.051, E.052 and E.060.