TitleNight Sky
Artist
Richard Bosman
(American, b. 1944)
Date1990
MediumColor aquatint on two plates printed on white wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 43 7/8 × 30 1/4 in.
Plate size (2 plates, overall): 35 1/2 × 23 1/16 in.
Image size: 35 1/2 × 23 1/16 in.
EditionA.P. 4/10
SignedSigned in graphite at LR: "Bosman 90".
MarkingsBlindstamp at BLC with standing figure and "ANW"; another blindstamp at BRC: "BRANSTEAD / STUDIO".
Watermark: Somerset / ENGLAND.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, April 26, 1995
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1995.6
Label TextPainter and printmaker Richard Bosman was born in Madras, India and was raised in Egypt and Australia. He studied art at the Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing, London from 1964 to 1969 and immigrated to the United States, continuing his studies at the New York Studio School from 1969 to 1971. Bosman emerged in the early 1980s as part of a larger post-war artistic movement that was representational in style, drew on appropriation imagery, and has been identified as so-called new expressionism or figurative expressionism. The artist often employs a stop-frame method of working, similar to that of comic illustration and film techniques and his work has been compared to a variety of trans-generational artists from Alex Katz (with whom the artist studied at the New York Studio School) to Dana Schutz.While he has often mined narrative imagery from Pulp sources for his works, "Night Sky" eschews any such references and is an important example of Bosman's use of the stop-frame technique through his use of two plates to create one aquatint. One of the artist's more nuanced works as a result of its monochromaticism, "Night Sky's" two images of one landscape in a vertical format suggest the frames of movie reel. A seeming far away tundra or imaginary desert, the loneliness of the expansive landscapes are underscored by the lack of any human presence. This print is also somewhat unique within the artist's oeuvre as he is best known as a woodblock printmaker, only rarely undertaking other techniques such as aquatint.
