Message III
1961
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View on museum website →Medium
drypoint in black on laid paper
Dimensions
plate: 24.9 x 15.9 cm (9 13/16 x 6 1/4 in.) sheet: 48.7 x 33.1 cm (19 3/16 x 13 1/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of The Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection
Accession Number
1996.89.13
Art Historical Context
**Message III** by Ji Balcar, crafted in 1961, invites visitors into the intimate world of mid-20th-century Czech printmaking. This delicate drypoint print, executed in black ink on laid paper, measures a modest plate size of 24.9 x 15.9 cm, with the full sheet extending to 48.7 x 33.1 cm. Now housed in the National Gallery of Art's of Prints (CG-W), it entered the collection as a generous gift from Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection, which championed exceptional Central European works. Drypoint, Balcar's chosen medium, is a direct and expressive intaglio technique. The artist scratches lines...
About the Artist
Jirí Balcar
Jiří Balcar (1929–1968) was a Czech graphic artist, painter, illustrator, typographer, and poster designer whose brief career bridged socialist realism's constraints and emerging international modernism in postwar Czechoslovakia. Born in Kolín to physician Emilian Balcar, whose 1945 suicide profoundly impacted the young artist, Balcar graduated from Kolín Gymnasium in 1948. He briefly studied art ...