Krishna Reddy - Dummy Manuscript

KRISHNA REDDY: Printmaker, Pioneer, Philosopher

Complete Viscosity Intaglio Prints

KRISHNA REDDY: Printmaker, Pioneer, Philosopher

Complete Viscosity Intaglio Prints

Umesh Gaur

Preface – Sasha Suda, Director, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Essays

1. Krishna Reddy: Printmaker, Pioneer, Philosopher – Umesh Gaur

2. Krishna Reddy’s Variations: Sculpting Metal Plates and Printing Simultaneous Colors - Christina Taylor

3. The Print as Process: Krishna Reddy’s Transformative Experiments – Umesh Gaur

4. Postwar Printmaking in Paris: Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17 - Christina Weyl

5. Krishna Reddy: The Movement of Life - Heather Hughes

6. From Line to Form: Krishna Reddy’s Evolution into Figuration – Carol Huh

7. Imagining Space: Krishna Reddy and Mid-20th Century Abstraction - Jeffrey Wechsler

8. Passing the Torch: Krishna Reddy and Generations of Printmakers - Judith Brodsky

Complete Viscosity Intaglio Prints

Centennial Timeline, 1925-2025

Major Institutional Collections

Bibliography

Glossary

Authors

Preface

Sasha Suda Director, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Krishna Reddy: Printmaker, Pioneer, Philosopher

Umesh Gaur

Krishna Reddy's artistic journey was shaped as much by life experience as by technical mastery. Over seven decades, spanning continents from rural India to studios in Paris and New York, and a prolific teaching career at New York University, Reddy's career was grounded in his spirituality, his relentless pursuit of knowledge, and the profound philosophical underpinnings of life.

In 1998, when Krishna Reddy was retiring from active printmaking, he wrote an essay titled "Art Expression as a Learning Process." In this essay, he reflected on his long career as a student, artist, and educator. This essay was not a traditional artist statement. It was deeply reflective of his life, which he described as a lifelong process of discovery, curiosity, wonder, and connection with both humanity and the world around him. What impressed me most was the fact that Reddy rooted his art not only as self-reflection, but as a reflection of his genuine desire to understand our place in this universe.

Reddy began the essay by stating that humans are not separated from nature but are a part of its ongoing and ever-changing dynamics. He emphasized that modern life has given us artificial compartments, such as economic systems, politics, and social hierarchy. He felt that this had isolated humanity from nature, spirituality, and individual creativity. Reddy firmly believed that every person, regardless of their background or circumstances, has tremendous potential to be creative. What matters most is not the person's talent, but their ability to wonder like a child and be aware of the world around them without preconceived notions. For him, art began by seeing the world around him. He felt that art is not a matter of style or

beautification but instead should emerge from the beautiful world in which we live. He believed the great artists were also great thinkers, not great stylists, and that their art emerged from their sense of wonderment.

Reddy went further to criticize the modern art world, where he felt that commercial interests and the artist's reputation had overshadowed artistic creativity in some cases. He believed art has to be lived, not merely created or performed, and it should grow out of the artist's commitment to truth and their dedication to inner transformation.

The Philosopher's Apprentice: Encounters That Shaped a Pioneer

Reddy's journey began in Nandanoor, a village in Andhra Pradesh, in a family grounded in rural traditions. Despite not being born into privilege, his teachers recognized his artistic sensitivity and his hunger for learning from a young age. This early display of determination and passion set the stage for his future artistic endeavors.

Reddy's artistic turning point occurred during his early education at Kala Bhavana, the art school founded by Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan. This school, which embraced a radical alternative to conventional colonial education, nurtured young art students in the spirit, mind, and body, emphasizing a connection to nature in open-air classrooms. There, Reddy studied under some of India's most influential modernists, like Nandlal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, and Binode Bihari Mukherjee, each of whom believed that art was not separated from life. These influential artists shaped Reddy's deep respect for

materials and processes and instilled in him the idea that artistic practice is also a path of personal and philosophical inquiry. It was here that Reddy encountered the notion that art must serve a higher purpose and could be a path for self-understanding and ethical living. He wholeheartedly imbibed the idea that the artist must be in harmony with nature and develop a power of internal vision.

It was around this time that Reddy developed a close relationship with Jiddu Krishnamoorthi, a profound thinker and philosopher whose teachings emphasized personal freedom and self-awareness. Krishnamoorthi's ideas struck Reddy as a challenge to look within and pursue artistic truth, not influenced by tradition or imitation. This internal freedom would eventually become central to Reddy's approach to art making. He often spoke of "entering the plate without preconceptions," a mindset that echoes Krishnamoorthi's idea of "observing without the observer".

It was Jiddu Krishnamurti who encouraged Krishna to go to London to pursue art, where he met another thinker, V. K Krishna Menon, who also greatly influenced him. Menon was a philosopher–diplomat who became India's ambassador to the United Nations. Menon challenged Reddy to think of art as a moral act and introduced him to the idea that an artist, like a philosopher, should explore ideas of human dignity, universality, and their role in society.

Reddy's encounters with thinkers like Jiddu Krishnamoorthi and Krishna Menon gave him a distinctive vision of art as a journey of inner transformation. Their influence was profound, shaping not only his artistic philosophy but also the very nature of his prints. Reddy's prints are not narrative, but contemplative. He is not just a maker of prints, but a questioner of meanings, a testament to the profound and transformative power of his encounters.

Atelier 17: The Laboratory Where a Pioneer Emerged

Founded by Stanley William Hayter in 1926, Atelier 17 was a collaborative print laboratory where experimentation and artists came together. The list of people who passed through his doors reads like a who's who of 20th-century modernism: Picasso, Miró, Giacometti, Ernst, and later Peterdi and Nevelson.

When Reddy joined Atelier 17 in 1951, Hayter had only just reestablished the center in Paris after a break of more than a decade. The situation for printmaking in postwar Paris was quite different from what Hayter left behind in 1939 when he moved the workshop to New York during World War II. It was not assured that his workshop would flourish again. Krishna Reddy's arrival and his eagerness to experiment supercharged the studio's reintegration into Paris, solidifying its position as a leader in cutting-edge technical research in printmaking.

Reddy's most celebrated achievement and what makes him a pioneer was his transformation of the viscosity printing technique. Hayter had already developed the concept of viscosity printing, which involved using inks of varying thicknesses to print multiple colors from a single plate. But it was Reddy, working in close collaboration with fellow artist Kaiko Moti, who transformed this method from a technical curiosity into a true art form. Their partnership, marked by shared vision and relentless experimentation, led to the discovery that variations in ink viscosity and roller pressure could produce multiple-colored radiant images never seen before in intaglio printmaking.

Viscosity printing would become Reddy's vehicle, with which he continued to innovate and experiment for the rest of his career into the 1990s. The plate, for Reddy, was not just a template; it was a partner in a dialogue. He used to say, "The Plate has its own life, it tells you what it wants".

3 – Maternity, 1955-58

Reddy approached printmaking as an artist, scientist, and philosopher. Works like Germination II, Fish and Maternity (Fig. 1-3) are not just visual marvels; they are mediations on the interconnectedness of life. Reddy brought to printmaking the Shantiniketan-trained respect for nature, Krishnamoorthi inspired attentiveness to perception, and the scientist's delight in process and variation. His fusion of the viscosity technique with philosophy was unprecedented, and it is here that his pioneering legacy took root.

At a time when prints were seen as secondary to painting, Reddy insisted that each viscosity print was a unique work of art in its own right. The uniqueness of each of Reddy's viscosity prints blurred the lines between painting and printmaking, and in doing so, Reddy helped elevate the medium of printmaking.

Fig. 1 – Germination II, 1964

Fig. 2 - Fish, 1952

Fig.

Krishna Reddy's association with Atelier 17 also placed him at the crossroads of modernist spatial invention and the organic surrealist tradition, particularly the strand rooted in automatism This technique encouraged spontaneous, subconscious mark-making. Reddy absorbed the visual language pioneered by painters like Joan Miró, André Masson, and Roberto Matta, where flowing, loosely applied inks or pigments created dreamlike, indeterminate forms suspended in uncertain environments. In works like Child in Space and Sun Worshipers (Fig. 4-5), you can feel the influence of surrealism, automatism, and the subconscious. Unlike many painters of the movement, however, Reddy translated these ephemeral forms into print, a medium typically more rigid and process-bound thus pushing the boundaries of both surrealism and intaglio printmaking. In the crucible of Atelier 17, Krishna Reddy emerged not only as a technical innovator but as a spiritual and intellectual pioneer, one who redefined what the print could be.

While Paris and Atelier 17 had offered him the space to transform viscosity intaglio into a powerful new printmaking language, New York became the arena where he deepened this work teaching, mentoring, and engaging in lifelong philosophical inquiry. In this dynamic and diverse city, Reddy's influence would radiate outward, not only through his technical innovations but through the generations of artists he inspired.

Reddy's renewed collaboration with master printmaker Robert Blackburn in 1968 in New York was another pivotal moment in his career. Their partnership, which began in postwar Paris, found fertile ground in Blackburn's Manhattan-based Printmaking Workshop. Founded in 1947, the workshop was one of the first inclusive, open-access studios in the U.S. Blackburn's ethos of collaboration and accessibility resonated deeply with Reddy, who brought his exacting technical knowledge of multiviscosity printing to the workshop. Reddy's presence introduced a new dimension of rigor, and his unique techniques provided fresh possibilities for artists looking to expand beyond traditional intaglio methods.

Fig. 4 – Child in Space, 1974

Fig. 5 – Sun Worshipers, 19775

Bridging Worlds: Krishna Reddy's Global Studio in New York

Through demonstrations, collaborations, and mentorship, Reddy inspired a new generation of American printmakers who learned his methods along with his belief that technique and philosophy should evolve together.

In 1976, Reddy joined the faculty of New York University's Department of Art and Art Education. He professed his method of integrating material, process, and philosophical inquiry. He often remarked, "The closer one gets to the materials, the more pliable they become to one's senses." This ethos shaped his workshops, which resembled laboratories rather than classrooms places of exploration, intuition, and dialogue.

At NYU, Reddy started the Color Print Atelier, a specialized studio dedicated to viscosity color printing. Within this environment, artists and educators from across the globe gathered to explore not only the mechanics of Reddy's technique but also its metaphysical underpinnings. Reddy would later describe this phase as one of "great revelation and learning," where teaching and discovery were indivisible.

While at NYU, drawing on thirty years of studio notes, Reddy published a seminal book, New Ways of Color Printmaking: The Significance of Materials and Processes (1988). Even today, the book remains a foundational resource in the field of viscosity printing and a testament to Reddy's unique synthesis of science, art, and introspective practice.

Reddy traveled extensively across the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, conducting lectures and workshops that established him as a pioneer in the field of printmaking.

During this prolific period, Reddy's personal life also underwent profound changes. He and his wife, artist Judith Blum Reddy, adopted their daughter Arpana shortly before relocating to New York. Between 1974 and 1976, Reddy created a series of prints Apu Crawling, Apu's Space, Child in Space, Child Descending in which childhood became a metaphor for awakening consciousness, innocence, and creative potential.

Arpana's love of the circus led Reddy to what is considered his most ambitious project: the Clown series (Fig. 7-8). The Great Clown , widely considered his magnum opus, is a masterwork philosophical, tender, and technically dazzling. It's not just a portrait of a performer. It's a meditation on vulnerability, resilience, and transcendence. The series, which Reddy worked on between 1974 and 1976, is a profound exploration of the human condition, utilizing the figure of the clown as a metaphor for life's complexities.

Fig. 6 – Apu Crawling, 1975

Reddy's artistic achievements but also underscored his significance in the art world. The exhibition made clear that Reddy's influence extended beyond the studio he was redefining what it meant to be a modern print artist.

The retrospective exhibition traveled to India in 1982–83, supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), and was exhibited at the Lalit Kala Akademi and other institutions. For many Indian audiences, this was the first time they encountered Reddy's revolutionary viscosity techniques, and the show positioned him firmly within the canon of post-independence Indian modernism.

At the heart of Reddy's New York life was his SoHo loft on Wooster Street. It was part home, part studio, and part sanctuary, a place where philosophy and practice merged. Filled with the hum of the press, the smell of ink, and outfitted with specialized tools (including his famous dental drill "Pierre"), the space reflected his meticulous technical prowess as well as his profound curiosity. It was also a place where Reddy and his wife Judy welcomed visiting artists, students, and friends who often found themselves in deep philosophical conversation, surrounded by worksin-progress.

Judith Blum Reddy's presence made this environment even richer. A formidable artist in her own right, she fostered, with Krishna, a life rooted in mutual respect, dialogue, and intellectual exploration. Their home carried forward the spirit of Atelier 17 a workshop of minds as much as hands.

In 1981, Krishna Reddy: A Retrospective was organized at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, curated by Susan Fillin-Yeh. This landmark exhibition was the first major New York exhibition to fully showcase the depth of Reddy's printmaking, sculpture, and drawing. It not only celebrated

Reddy retired from NYU in 2001 but continued his involvement with the artistic world. His teachings continued through the Krishna Reddy Papers an expansive archive housed at NYU's Bobst Library, containing correspondence, experimental prints, lectures, and unpublished writings.

Krishna Reddy's New York years synthesized a lifetime of inquiry into a radiant legacy. In New

Fig. 7 - Clown Falling, 1981

Fig. 8 – The Great Clown, 1981

York, the printmaker became a philosopher in full and a pioneer who, through material and meaning, reshaped the language of modern art.

The Artist as a Way of Life

Krishna Reddy was not merely a technician or a teacher, nor was he simply a modernist or a mystic; he was all of these at once, and more. Reddy's life was a journey across cultures, philosophies, and

mediums, but at its core was an enduring commitment to wonder, integrity, and transformation. In every phase of his life from Santiniketan to Paris, from New York to his studio in SoHo, Reddy upheld a belief that creativity is not an act of will, but a process of listening, inquiry, and surrender. He transcended stylistic labels, technical categories, and cultural boundaries. And in doing so, he lived the very title of this book Printmaker, Pioneer, Philosopher with rare conviction and grace.

Krishna Reddy’s Variations: Sculpting Metal Plates and Printing Simultaneous Colors

Christina Taylor

Both Reddy’s plate preparation and inking techniques play a critical role in how he achieves limitless variations amongst his impressions. Reddy rejected the concept of identically printed editions, and instead, harnessed printmaking to create radically different images from a single plate. No two prints are the same. With a background as a sculptor, Reddy did not see printmaking merely as a flat, graphic process that translated his ideas into images on paper, but rather, he saw the potential of printmaking to highlight the three-dimensionality of the materials and methods required to build his varied surfaces. Both his plates and prints exude these sculptural sensibilities. During the early 1950s, Reddy was living in Paris and visited Atelier 17, an experimental printmaking studio founded by Stanley William Hayter.

“Hayter established Atelier 17 in 1926 to develop print media as another means of expression and bring them closer to the artist. The Atelier’s primary focus was on experimentation and the discovery of new technical and expressive possibilities in printmaking, particularly intaglio.” 1

This focus on experimentation resonated with Reddy and he became an active member, and ultimately the co-director of the workshop from 1964 to 1976. Reddy held a deep interest in color and found that he was able to express color with printmaking in a way that he couldn’t in sculpture, and soon he shifted his artistic practice towards printmaking. Typically in printing, each color in the final image requires a separate plate, and only when the inked plates are printed successively in perfect registration is the full color image realized. Reddy was inspired to explore the possibility of applying all colors at once to a single plate and therefore eliminating the need for multiple plates. At Atelier 17 alongside his colleagues Kaiko Moti and Hayter, Reddy developed a method where the viscosities (or degree of oiliness) of printing inks are manipulated so that simultaneous inking and printing from one plate is possible.

“We will print this plate in a single pass through the press. The possibilities of [simultaneous color printing] are extraordinary, both in the number and in the richness, vividness and intensity of colors achieved.” 2

In addition to modifying colored inks and applying those inks to the plate’s surface in particular ways, Reddy’s method of simultaneous color printing also required the thoughtful creation of the layered metal printing plate. This essay pairs detail images and new research with Reddy’s own descriptions of his process to clearly define his platemaking and inking techniques and illustrate how each plays an important role in how he developed his life’s work.

1 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 31-32.

2 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 108.

Sculpting the metal plates

Reddy begins the process of creating a print with a metal plate. Prints, and by extension printing plates, are often considered two-dimensional because of their relative thinness compared to their height and width. But no material exists in only two dimensions and Reddy recognized that “…the plate has intrinsic sculptural qualities, that it lends itself to carving and sculpting…” 3. As Reddy developed his innovative printing techniques, he not only embraced the depth of the plate as he would any other sculptural medium, but he also relied on the three-dimensionality of his metal plates to achieve the pulsating and vibrating color effects during the printing process.

“To prepare such a plate, a certain amount of relief is necessary, whether it be caused by open-biting, by aquatint…or by breaking up the surface of the plate with a variety of tools. The principle behind any of these techniques is the same: to create a range of depths within the plate which will in turn contribute to the density of the print…” 4

Although this essay will separate Reddy’s plate manipulation techniques into three categories –chemical etching, hand tools, and machine tools – he consciously built up his images into each metal plate by combining and layering many techniques. Reddy describes how “the making of an image on a plate can occur in so many ways; each process, combined with any other, opens up rich possibilities. The combinations are innumerable.” 5 .

Chemical etching

Etching is a method of selectively removing metal from the surface of the plate with strong acids or mordants. Etchings are traditionally printed intaglio, where the design is etched and inked below the surface of the plate, however, etchings can also be printed in relief, or from the unaltered surface of the plate. During printing, Reddy was able to combine aspects of intaglio, relief, and viscosity inking because of the way he prepared and sculpted his plates before any printing began.

Open Bite (Deep Etch)

Open bite refers to etching large, “open” areas of a plate without a mechanism to break up or roughen the surface (such is common with aquatint). When a metal plate with open bite is inked and printed intaglio, the color is not as dark and saturated because there is no roughened surface for the ink to cling to. However, Reddy was utilizing open bite etching to alter the depth of the plate to facilitate viscosity inking with rollers, rather than intaglio inking. Reddy would often use a deep acid bite as the first step to establish the image; sometimes etching the plate in the acid for hours at a time to get a very deep etch 6 . After the image was established, he would take hand and machine tools to further refine and sculpt the plate.

3 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 35.

4 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 36.

5 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 66.

6 Johnson, 2025.

“Deep biting with acid produces stepped levels down into the plate, thus forming a succession of reliefs. The action of the acid creates hard edges, which will show up as heavy linear structures in the print. These may be kept as a bold, well-defined image, or they may be modified – by use of a scraper, emery paper and burnisher – revealing subtle, undulating structures.” 7

Fig. 1: Wave, overall image; location of detail marked in red Fig. 2: Wave, raking light detail; the “stringy” lines in relief compared to the bulbous dimensionality from the deep open bite etch (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

“I developed a way of structuring fine relief lines on the plate, using a highly polymerized cellulosic paint and a funnel made of wax paper. The paint flowed continuously in strings without a break.” 8

Here Reddy is describing how he applied an acid-resistant paint to the plate before he submerged the plate in acid to etch it deeply via open bite. After the plate was removed from the acid, and the plate was cleaned off, where the stringy paint protected the plate from the acid the plate remained in relief in those fine lines. The surrounding bulbous shapes are deeply etched and are what give the prints their extreme dimensionality, especially visible in a side or raking light (Fig. 2).

Aquatint

Rosin ground aquatint is an early method of adding tonal variations to a print. In order to roughen the surface enough to hold ink, the clean plate is covered with rosin dust, and then the dust is melted and fused to the plate with heat. When the plate is etched, the acid “bites” and lowers the level of the plate around each grain of rosin. Once the etching is complete, the plate is cleaned of acid and rosin, and the texture has changed from smooth and polished, to rough and gritty. Depending on what the artist hopes to achieve, the rosin particles can vary from coarse to very fine.

7 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 36.

8 Bronx Museum of the Arts, ”Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective,” 68.

“Inspite of the length of time aquatint has been in use, it remains a beautiful new territory to explore. Aquatint is capable of tonal distinctions which no other method can produce. And it has an element of surprise.” 9

In his print Waterform (Fig. 3), he superimposed a series of aquatints creating a range of textures. Evidence of coarser rosin particles are visible as distinct white islands where the plate was protected during etching. The surrounding ink is rich and dimensional, a result of a deeply etched aquatint capable of holding a large quantity of ink (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3: Waterform, overall image; location of detail marked in red Fig. 4: Waterform, raking light detail; the aquatint texture (white islands) and thick intaglio ink layer (black and gray ink) (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Halftones

“Playing with halftones – worked by means of aquatint, photographic dot screens, or hand and machine tools – can bring extreme subtlety and richness to the print. Minute indentations in the plate create porous areas. When printed in the simultaneous color process, dots and streaks of pure color are juxtaposed side by side, producing effects similar to those sought after by the Impressionists. Seen from a distance, the print has an overall quality of richness, made up of shimmering areas of luminous color. The half-tone can be also scraped down to form shadows of the initial work, thus probing the illusory as well as the actual dimensionality of the plate.” 10

9 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 43.

10 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 36.

To chemically etch a halftone, the image is photographically exposed to a metal plate where the values are broken up by a dot screen (a plastic sheet filled with black dots). The dots create the illusion of continuous tone and can range in size with both random and mechanical dot patterns. The concept of a dot pattern – whether added through aquatint, machine tools, or photographic halftones – was central to Reddy’s practice. In Clown Forming (Fig. 5), he utilized a photographic halftone technique, and then further manipulated the plate by scraping and sanding down the surface to break up the mechanical dot patterns (Fig. 6). He also added variable dots using machine tools and strong linear elements with engraving.

Fig. 5: Clown Forming, overall image; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 6: Clown Forming, detail; the regular dot pattern is a characteristic of the photo-halftone screen. Reddy further manipulated the plate’s surface by both scraping portions of the halftone away and by adding additional marks with hand and machine tools.

Hand tools

Hand tools do not require electricity or another power source to operate. Reddy utilized a range of hand tools – from those specifically designed for printmaking and engraving to metal working and dental tools. Zinc and copper – both metals that Reddy used to make his prints – are hard enough to hold up during the pressure required of printing, but soft enough to manipulate by hand with steel tools.

“The experience of handling tools…brings the artist in very close contact with the materials, and especially with the plate. Once a healthy awareness and sensitivity have been established, the plate is seen to be an extremely pliable substance. Developing images is now considered in terms of direct carving, engraving and gouging, with no recourse to acid. Hand tools, while they can be the most laborious method of working a metal plate, give the greatest sense of intimacy.” 11

Reddy utilized three main categories of hand tools: 1. tools to create lines, 2. tools to create repeated patterns, and 3. removal or softening tools.

11 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 36.

Tools to create lines

Burins and engraving tools

7: Krishna Reddy engraving with a burin into the metal plate for Spiderweb. Fig. 8: Water Lilies, overall; location of detail (below) marked in red

A burin is a steel cutting tool with a thin, pointed blade used to cut a design into a metal printing plate. Because of the shape of the tool, as the artist carves into the metal, the lines characteristically swell and taper depending on the depth of the cut (Fig. 9). The plate is then inked and printed intaglio. Although engraving was invented centuries prior, Reddy and other Atelier 17 artists were fascinated by the depth of line and sculptural quality achieved using burins and various engraving tools (Fig. 10).

9: Water Lilies, detail – normal light; the characteristic swelling and tapering of the engraved lines is notable where Reddy employed the burin (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Fig.

Fig.

Fig. 10: Water Lilies, detail – raking light; the depth of gouging that Reddy achieved with the burin is highlighted in raking light (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Drypoint Needles

Fig. 11: Krishna Reddy laying out the composition for Sorrow of the World on the plate by directly scratching drypoint lines into the metal.

Drypoint is an intaglio printing technique where the image is drawn or scratched directly into the metal plate. Unlike engraving, the lines are much shallower and metal is not removed from the plate, it is instead displaced creating a burr where ink gathers during printing. When printed, the scratched line and adjacent metal burr create a characteristic soft and velvety line (Fig. 13). In some cases, Reddy would use a drypoint needle to map out his composition, especially when he didn’t establish the image initially with a deep etch. When employing drypoint, he often used a ruler to create structured lines and grids within which he would build up his compositions.

Fig. 12: Rhyme Broken, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 13: Detail of Rhyme Broken – The characteristic fine and fuzzy drypoint lines are notable where Reddy drew directly on the plate (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Tools to create repeated patterns

Roulette

Fig. 14: Krishna Reddy using a wheeled roulette tool to add repeating texture to the plate for Water Lilies.

A roulette is a wheeled tool with fine teeth, that when rolled over the metal plate, creates indentations that will hold ink during printing. Roulettes come in a variety of styles – most commonly in dot, line or irregular patterns – and Reddy utilized these different types of roulettes to add repeating patterns (Fig. 16). Unlike etching techniques such as aquatint and halftone, the roulette was a way for the artist to add texture in a direct and immediate way.

Fig. 15: Flower, overall; location of detail marked in red Fig. 16: Flower, detail image; Reddy utilized a wheeled roulette tool with a wide line pattern, then rolled the roulette in opposite directions to create this cross-hatched effect (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Removal or softening tools

Scraper and burnisher

Fig. 17: Krishna Reddy using a burnisher to smooth areas of the metal plate for Sorrow of the World so it does not collect ink.

Scrapers and burnishers are often used in tandem. A scraper is a triangular shaped steel tool with three sharp edges, so that when dragged across the printing plate, metal is removed or scraped away. A burnisher is a rounded steel tool, polished to a high finish to polish and remove scratches from the plate’s surface. Reddy often used scrapers and burnishers to manipulate the depth of his plates, but he also used the tools to modify or make changes to his composition (Figs. 18-21).

Fig. 18: Three Graces, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig 19: Three Graces, detail; horizontal lines remain visible (before they are scraped away and no longer seen in the later state [Fig. 21]) (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Fig 20: Three Graces, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig 21: Three Graces, detail; Reddy scraped away areas (horizontal lines seen in Fig. 19), giving him the space to add spirals to the composition with burins (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Machine tools

Reddy used a variety of electrically powered machine tools to sculpt and modify his plates. When walking into his studio, some might question whether a printmaker indeed occupied the space filled with unconventional machines and tools. It is evident that he felt comfortable manipulating the metal plates using a variety of tools, and over time came to embrace machine tools for much of his work.

Fig. 22: Krishna Reddy in his studio surrounded by unconventional printmaking tools.

“Machine tools enable the entire plate to be worked with such ease that image-building, or its removal, becomes rapid. Machine tools encourage spontaneity and can be of great value in strengthening the expression of the artist…akin to the directness of contact experienced in painting and sculpture.” 12

12 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 108.

Flex-shaft rotary tool

Fig. 23: Krishna Reddy using a flex shaft rotary tool on the plate for Water Lilies

Fig. 24: (Krishna Reddy tools, TBD)

A flex-shaft rotary tool is a power tool that uses a flexible shaft to transmit rotational power from a motor to a handpiece. This handpiece then holds the grinding or polishing tools, allowing Reddy to work on objects with greater precision and ease (Fig. 23). Reddy’s tools varied greatly from grinding and polishing tools, to cutting and stippling tools, and each created their own marks and effects in the printing plate.

When describing the process of making his print Blossoming, Reddy recalls “both the reliefs and the textures were worked by machine tools using several serrated steel and stone grinders. This was the first time I carved a whole plate with machine tools.” 13

suggest

Fig. 25: Blossoming, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 26: Detail of Blossoming; the regular, horizontal marks (inked here in blue)

Reddy’s use of machine tools (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Vibro-tool®

Fig. 27: Krishna Reddy using a Vibrotool® on the plate for Sorrow of the World to add stippled texture.

13 Bronx Museum of the Arts, ”Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective,” 69.

The Vibro-tool® is an electric engraving tool manufactured by Burgess Vibrocrafters Inc. intended for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to engraving metal, decorating glassware, and tooling leather. Rather than rotating, the motor vibrates at high speeds “at the rate of 120 strokes per second…[adding] power to your skill.” 14 Reddy held this tool more like a pencil and created linear dot strokes and other textures in his plates (Fig. 27).

Fig. 28: Sun Worshippers, overall; location of detail marked in red Fig. 29: Detail of Sun Worshippers; dotted Vibrotool® texture printed in green ink (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

14 Mittermeier, “Vibro-Tool,” 31.

Building simultaneous color for printing

Traditionally, to print in color, an artist or printer was required to separate each color from the image, create plates for each color, and print them all in perfect registration to build up to the full color image. Simultaneous color printing, by contrast, eliminates the need for color separation and allows the artist or printer to apply all the colors to a single plate before printing it one time through the press. Although artists at Atelier 17, and especially Reddy, mastered simultaneous color printing, he was not the first to apply simultaneous color techniques to his prints. Reddy utilized established simultaneous color printing techniques, such as à la poupée, with innovative ones, such as viscosity printing, to maximize the potential of simultaneous color printing.

To many, these methods are technically complex and counterintuitive, however, Reddy felt that simultaneous color printing simplified and integrated the printing process with the creation of art, rather than the printing process acting solely as a means to an end. Utilizing one plate was of utmost importance to his philosophy as an artist. “With the new methods of selectively depositing both the intaglio and surface colors on the same plate we can print all the colors in one operation. In this way we can achieve a color print of great graphic quality and with a directness never realizable before. 15”

Intaglio vs. surface color

Etchings and engravings are traditionally printed intaglio, where the design is etched or carved into the plate and the ink sits in the grooves for printing; however, etchings can also be printed in relief, or from the remaining unetched surface of the plate. Reddy blurred the line between intaglio and relief printing by combining various simultaneous color printing techniques. It is critical to understand the difference between intaglio inking and surface color inking when thinking about simultaneous color. When inking intaglio, Reddy covered the plate with ink, and then by wiping with tarlatans he drove ink into the grooves of the plate while simultaneously removing ink from the surface. This was the first step in the inking process. After inking and wiping intaglio, when inking surface colors, Reddy rolled the ink over the intaglio-inked plate in one careful pass. Reddy often modified the viscosity of the surface color inks, as well as selected various roller densities to apply multiple (up to three or four) colors onto the multilayered surface of the plate. By combining intaglio, relief, and viscosity inking he maximized the possibilities of expression in a single plate.

15 Reddy, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, “Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective,” I Introduction.

Intaglio Inking Techniques

À la poupée

À la poupée is “a color mixing process in which the intaglio plate is inked in different colors in different areas with “dollies” or “poupées” of rolled canvas or felt, and wiped one area at a time with tarlatan and by hand.” 16 À la poupée inking causes adjacent inks to blend and mix somewhat during the wiping process. In some cases, Reddy would avoid inking certain intaglio sections of the plate, which resulted in areas of the print that are embossed from the pressure of printing yet maintain the bright paper tone without any transfer of ink.

Fig. 30: Three Graces, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 31: Detail of Three Graces; à la poupée inking of the black and yellow inks blend where they meet and mix on the plate during the wiping process (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

16 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 133.

Viscosity printing

Surface Color Inking Techniques

Viscosity printing is a relief or surface color technique. Surface colors are applied to the plate once all intaglio colors are already in place. Printing inks used for viscosity printing are oil-based. Viscosity refers to the degree of oiliness of the ink. Raw linseed oil is added to printing ink to alter the viscosity. Inks with less oil are considered “dry” and viscous (such as ink straight out of the can). Inks with more oil are considered “wet” and fluid (such as ink that is modified with raw linseed o il). When inks of varying viscosities are rolled over one another, they mix or repel one another in predictable ways. Superimposition and juxtaposition are the two fundamental methods of viscosity printing.

Superimposition

Superimposition of colors leads to an optical mixing effect, where the layered colors combine to make a third, separate color. When the “dry” and viscous ink is rolled onto the plate first, the second “wet” and fluid ink will be absorbed into that first ink layer and combine on the plate. The “dry” ink layer acts like a thirsty sponge and readily absorbs the “wet” ink. In this detail of Splash, where the bright orange and blue inks are superimposed, they mix to create a deeper brown.

Fig. 32: Splash, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 33: Detail of Splash; superimposition – or mixing – of blue and orange inks to create brown where they overlap.

Juxtaposition

Fig. 34: Krishna Reddy illustrating the capability of inks to juxtapose one another when the viscosities are varied.

Juxtaposition of colors maintains two distinct colors, even when the colors are rolled over one another. When the viscosities of the ink are reversed, and a “wet” and fluid ink is rolled on the plate first followed by a “dry” and viscous ink, the “dry” ink layer still absorbs some of the first ink layer like a sponge, but instead of mixing on the plate, the inks mix on the roller. What is left of the plate are two colors juxtaposed side by side that do not mix. In this detail of Woman and Her Reflections (Fig. 36), the bright yellow and blue do not overlap to create green but rather sit side by side.

Fig. 35: Woman and Her Reflections, overall; location of detail marked in red Fig. 36: Detail of Woman and Her Reflections; juxtaposition – without mixing – of blue and yellow inks.

The viscosity of inks can be varied and manipulated to add three to four colors to a plate. In addition to the difference in oil-content, colors are applied to the plate with rollers of different densities. Softer rollers flex and reach deeper into the plate, whereas harder rollers are stiff and only contact the upper surface of the plate. By altering the combination of roller densities and ink viscosities, Reddy was able to achieve an almost limitless variety of colors effects.

Pointillist broken color

Pointillist broken color or “pointillist manner” is an advanced viscosity printing technique that employs the theories of juxtaposition of colors on a small, dot scale. The plate is first prepared with small dots, such as an aquatint etched to varying depths, a photo halftone, or dotted texture created with machine or hand tools. The intaglio ink is applied first and sits in the lowest sections of the plate. The viscosities of the surface colors are varied and printed juxtaposed as described above. Because the dots are on such a small scale the juxtaposition of the three (or more colors) leads to what Reddy describes as “prints vibrantly shimmering with a full range of colors but that can be created as simply as an aquatint print in black and white.” 17

Fig. 37: Life Movement, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 38: Detail of Life Movement; the pointillist broken color technique where the juxtaposition of red, yellow, and blue inks in the background achieve a pulsating gray (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Contact process

After inking intaglio and surface rolling color onto his plates, Reddy would sometimes add a final layer of ink in select areas with a direct contact process. He first rolled color ink onto a thick glass slab, then he turned the printing plate face-down onto the ink slab and selectively pressed the back of the plate with his hands and fingers. Where he applied pressure, ink would transfer from the slab to the plate. 18 On prints where he utilized the contact process, Reddy drew notations on the back of his plates, so when the plate was face down, he knew exactly where he needed to apply pressure. 19

17 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 115.

18 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 32.

19 Williams, May 2025.

Fig. 39: Splash, overall; location of detail marked in red

Fig. 40: Detail of Splash in raking light; Reddy added the dark blue/black ink via the contact process. The application of ink corresponds to where he applied pressure from the back of the plate, not from rolling ink on the surface (Photo by Jason Wierzbicki, Division of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

“His experiments in [Atelier 17’s] method of simultaneous color printing from a single plate led to the discovery of a very personal and elaborate operation which distinguished his work at that time and to this day from all of the other artists using the simultaneous method.” 20 – Stanley William Hayter

Reddy carefully considered every aspect when making his prints. From the intimate and personal use of tools he selected when sculpting and modifying his metal plates to the discerning and intentional addition of color to even the smallest surface. Although some would consider Reddy a master of his materials, he viewed materials as a limitless means for an artist to explore.

“The process involved in working a plate and making a print from it are pathways of learning and discovery. Recognition that the image is shaped by a material process brings clarity, humility, and a sense of participation in the act of composition to the artist. The closer one gets to the materials – the more one learns of their nature, their behavior and their interaction – the more pliable they become to one’s senses. One works directly and spontaneously – like a potter feeling for his image through the clay. This journey into the deeper sources of materials should heighten our sensibilities and deepen our understanding, essential in creating a vital work of art.” 21

References

Bronx Museum of the Arts. Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective November 5, 1981 to February 28, 1982. 1981.

20 Hayter, Stanley William, Bronx Museum of the Arts, “Krishna Reddy: A Retrospective,” 10.

21 Reddy, ”Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes,” 1.

Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Birla Academy of Art and Culture. Krishna Reddy, a Retrospective. 1984.

Johnson, Mark (artist and former student of Krishna Reddy) in discussion with the author, April 26, 2025.

Mittermeier, Frank. “Vibro-Tool.” Gunsmith Supplies, Imported and Domestic Tools, 1952, pg. 31. https://archive.org/details/FrankMittermeierCatalog1952/mode/2up?view=theater

Reddy, Krishna. Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes Albany, State University Of New York Press, 1988.

Williams, Michael Kelly (artist and former student of Krishna Reddy) in discussion with the author, May 6, 2025.

The Print as Process: Krishna Reddy’s Transformative Experiments

Umesh Gaur

Krishna Reddy’s sustained engagement with printmaking began in the mid-1940s during his time at Santiniketan, where he experimented with a range of techniques including woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs, most of which were executed in monochrome. These early investigations laid the foundation for what would become a lifelong inquiry into both the material possibilities and the philosophical dimensions of the printmaking process.

A pivotal transformation occurred in the early 1950s, when Reddy joined Atelier 17 in Paris under the mentorship of Stanley William Hayter. It was here, amidst a community of avant-garde artists, that Reddy’s fascination with color in printmaking took root. What followed was an accidental discovery. While preparing a plate for inking, Reddy observed a small amount of colorless linseed oil left on a glass surface where colored ink was going to be rolled using a brayer; the ink did not adhere to the surface where the linseed oil was. This unexpected resistance prompted a series of systematic experiments conducted alongside fellow artist Kaiko Moti and with the support of Hayter. The group began altering the ratio of ink to linseed oil to explore how differences in viscosity affected the way inks would mix or repel and also how they would spread onto each other by adjusting the thickness of the inks on the plate. 22

This serendipitous moment would become the foundation of viscosity intaglio printing, a revolutionary technique that allowed for multicolor printing from a single plate. Reddy, more than anyone, made this process his own, refining it over decades into a highly expressive language of form and color. From his first prints in 1952 to The Great Clown (1981), and culminating in Woman of Sunflower (1997), Reddy continuously pushed the boundaries of what viscosity intaglio printing could produce from a carved plate, treating each impression as a unique act of transformation.

Reddy’s approach to printmaking was unconventional and introspective. He viewed the plate not as a static tool for repetition but as a living surface, a space of transformation. Printmaking for him was a meditative dialogue between artist and material, one that favored process over product and evolution over finality.

Influenced by his background in sculpture, Krishna Reddy developed a deeply tactile and labor-intensive approach to printmaking. He treated his plates almost like sculptural forms etching, carving, gouging, burnishing, and polishing them over extended periods, sometimes for years. From each plate, he created multiple impressions, adjusting the ink colors, wiping methods, and viscosity to generate compositions that were emotionally and visually distinct. What sets Reddy’s process apart is that these are not simply variations or steps toward a final image; most impressions were a fully realized work, complete in its emotional resonance, formal precision, and symbolic meaning.

22 Private communication with Krishna Reddy, January-February, 2006.

While Reddy arrived at a final version fairly quickly for some plates, the majority of the fifty-four viscosity intaglio plates he created a wide range of impressions each with its own distinct palette and surface treatment. Before selecting an impression for editioning, he typically produced many trial proofs and artist’s proofs, using each as an opportunity to explore the plate’s full expressive potential. This commitment to variation was not an eccentric detour, but a core tenet of Reddy’s artistic philosophy. While most printmakers worked toward a uniform edition, Reddy embraced the idea that each impression could reveal something new. His goal was not a final, perfected image, but the unfolding of multiple possibilities.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have had the privilege of assembling a complete collection of viscosity intaglio prints made from all fifty-four plates that Krishna Reddy created during his lifetime. In addition to acquiring representative impressions from each plate, my collecting has focused on documenting the striking variations for some of the prints that Reddy produced,

This essay examines Krishna Reddy’s experimental printmaking through five works in which he embraced this principle of variation. These case studies reveal not only what Reddy printed, but how his creative process unfolded demonstrating that, for him, the act of making was inseparable from the act of thinking.

Krishna Reddy’s Tuatara (1953) is one of the earliest examples of his unique approach to printmaking. Even early in his career, Reddy saw each impression as a chance to create something new. The three versions of Tuatara in grey, orange, and brown show us how he used color, texture, and technique to give each print its own character and emotional impact.

Fig. 1 - Tuatara, Artist’s Proof, IV/X (Grey)

Fig. 2 - Tuatara, Artist’s Proof (Orange)

Fig. 3 - Tuatara, Impression by the artist, Ed. 8/10 (Brown)

At the center of the image in all three versions is a large, glowing white shape that looks like a seed or pod, surrounded by pointed spikes. In two of the impressions, this form is joined by a striking red mark near its edge. Together, the pod and red accent shift in appearance and feeling from one print to another.

Although the pod keeps the same general shape in all three versions, its surface and mood changes. In the Grey Impression, the pod is textured and seems full of energy. It stands out brightly against a cool, blue background. The spikes are sharp and active. A bold red accent slashes across the right side of the form. It looks like a sudden burst or a wound, adding drama and intensity.

In the Orange Impression, the feeling is very different. The white pod is smooth and flat, almost like a symbol or icon. The background is filled with warm colors rust, orange, and gold. The red accent is missing here, which makes the composition feel calm and quiet. Without the red, the pod seems still and self-contained, no longer pulsing with energy.

The Brown Impression falls somewhere in between. The pod has texture again, but not as intense as in the Grey version. It sits in a rich background of earthy greens and browns. The red mark returns, but it is smaller and softer and blends more into its surroundings. This version feels balanced less dramatic than the Grey, more alive than the Orange. The pod seems fully developed.

By changing how he inked, wiped, and colored the same plate, Reddy turned one image into three very different works of art. The white pod shifts from glowing and energetic (Grey), to quiet and iconic (Orange), to grounded and full (Brown). The red accent plays a key role, adding emotion and rhythm where it appears and changing the mood entirely when it is absent.

In Tuatara, we don’t just see one image in different colors we see a single idea unfolding in three different ways.

While in Tuatara Reddy created variation primarily through changes in color and wiping, his prints, Three Graces (1953) and Water Form (1961), reveal another key dimension of his experimental approach: the ability to generate strikingly different impressions by continuously modifying the plate itself.

Fig. 4 - Three Graces, Artist’s proof (first impression)

Fig. 5 - Three Graces, Artist’s proof (second impression)

In Three Graces, this process of transformation is especially evident. A trio of pod-like forms floats on the right, framed by a lattice of radiating lines elements that remain consistent across all impressions. The real evolution unfolds on the left side of the composition, where a cluster of spirals gradually emerges across three versions. Studying these reveals how Reddy repeatedly returned to the plate, not just to refine, but to draw out the latent energy embedded in form. 23

In the first impression, the spirals are barely discernible submerged in a dense matrix of cross-hatched lines and directional strokes. The ovoid field is chaotic, gesturing toward structure but lacking resolution. The spirals hint at form but remain embryonic and indistinct.

By the second impression, they begin to take shape. The outlines sharpen, and Reddy isolates the forms from their turbulent surroundings likely through burnishing or additional engraving on the plate. The composition gains clarity, and the spirals assert themselves as intentional, autonomous presences within the field.

In the third impression, the spirals reach full articulation. Deepened and structurally refined, they glow with tonal contrast and surface complexity. They no longer seem tentative but pulse with energy at the core of the image. The surrounding lines now appear to radiate from these spirals, converting chaos into concentration.

Viewed together, the three impressions trace a journey from latency to presence. The spirals evolve from hidden potential to fully realized form. The plate was not a fixed template, but a sculptural surface, to be revised, reimagined, and brought to life anew.

23 Christina Taylor’s essay images…..

Fig. 6 - Three Graces, Impression by the Artist, Ed. 10/15 (third impression)

While the three impressions of Three Graces (1953) were created by Reddy progressively carving more material out of the plate, Water Form (1966) shows the opposite approach. 24 In this case, Reddy began by using machine tools to carve into the plate, building a richly textured surface with raised patterns and incised lines. He then applied a fine aquatint for subtle tonal variation and selectively polished certain areas of the plate to heighten the contrast between light and shadow. 25

The Blue Impression presumably represents an earlier state of the plate, likely printed after the initial carving. Here, the image glows with deep blues, turquoise, and soft whites. The central form, set within the textured background, resembles a seed, pod, or shell. It feels solid and still, as if embedded in layers of sediment. The etched lines are strong and clear, emphasizing the tactile nature of the plate. The overall feeling is one of stillness, like water that has dried up and left behind quiet, mineral traces.

The Brown Impression, in contrast, shows the plate after Reddy had further polished and refined it. Reddy used earth tones rust, ochre, and cream to create a grounded, almost fossil-like atmosphere. The central form, which previously felt heavy, now seems to float in a flowing, watery environment. The hard lines from the earlier impression have softened into wave-like rhythms and the entire surface appears alive with motion.

The Blue and Brown impressions of Water Form highlight Reddy’s sculptural way of thinking and his belief that forms should emerge naturally through process. Through carving, polishing, inking, and re-

24 Private communication with Dr. Heather Hughes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, April 2025.

25 Krishna Reddy – A Retrospective, exhibition catalog, Bronx Museum of Art, 1981, p 69.

Fig. 7 - Water Forn, Impression by the Artist, HC 5/5 (Blue Impression)

Fig. 8 - Water Forn, Impression by the Artist, HC V/V (Brown Impression)

inking, Reddy unlocked the energy within a single plate, using it not to represent water directly, but to express change, growth, and transformation.

It is important to note that these impressions are not mere variants or technical steps toward a final state. Each Water Form impression is a fully resolved work, with its own emotional tone. The Blue Impression is not simply a precursor to the Brown; it holds its own integrity and vision and does not simply reflect a linear progression.

The four impressions of Flower (1961), offer another rare window into Krishna Reddy’s working process and his search for visual and conceptual clarity through variation. These prints three trial proofs and the editioned print of Flower (1961), all made from the same plate, illustrate how Reddy used color, ink viscosity, and surface texture to explore emotional meaning and spatial depth. Through them, we see his thinking unfold as he experimented, refined, and eventually arrived at the final com position.

Fig. 9 - Flower, Trial Proof

Fig. 10 - Flower, Trial Proof

Fig. 11 - Flower, Trial Proof

Fig. 12 - Flower, Ed. 22/65

In the trial proofs, Reddy tested earthy colors like ochre, rust, and dark gray. These early prints with muscular shapes at their center seem alive and full of tension. Red and white highlights draw the eye to areas where energies meet and diverge, while dark, richly inked backgrounds add weight and intensity. These images suggest something raw and organic at times resembling geological formations or cellular structures.

Reddy experimented deeply in each trial, adjusting how the inks were wiped and layered. Though the central form remained the same, the surface appearance changed: in one version it looks rough and fibrous, in another, soft and flowing. These proofs became visual studies, showing how process and material could shape meaning.

The editioned print, however, took the work in a new direction. Using cooler colors blues, purples, and greens Reddy created a much lighter and more open image. The dense textures and weight of the proofs gave way to a glowing, airy composition. The central form, which looked heavy in the proofs, now seemed to float and radiate light. Technically, the editioned print shows Reddy’s precise control of ink viscosity and tone. The wiping is clean and careful, and the colors are blended subtly.

Comparing the trial proofs and the editioned print shows more than just stylistic differences it reveals a transformation in concept. The proofs represent a stage of becoming, where energy and form are still taking shape. The editioned print brings that energy into balance, softening the intensity and creating a calm, harmonious image.

Krishna Reddy’s The Great Clown (1981), widely considered his magnum opus, offers another powerful example of his ability to evoke emotion and mood through technique. The print brings together Reddy’s conceptual depth and technical mastery, but what makes it especially compelling is his use of color and process as tools for emotional exploration and not just visual effect. Each impression, with its unique palette and surface treatment, transforms the viewer’s experience, subtly altering the image’s emotional tone and interpretive resonance.

13 -

Fig.

The Great Clown, (Black Impression)

Fig. 14 - The Great Clown, Impression by the Artist VI/XX (Green Impression)

Fig. 15 - The Great Clown, State HC, (Yellow Impression)

Fig. 16 - The Great Clown, Impression by the Artist HC (Rainbow Impression)

This print was published by Galerie in Sweden, though all impressions were printed by Krishna Reddy in New York. In addition to an edition of seventy-five, Reddy created about a hundred unique impressions, each with distinct variations. A close examination of four such prints reveals how the clown figure assumes different personalities, expressing a range of moods and emotional states.

At the center of the composition is the clown, juggling multiple balls. His round, exaggerated nose becomes the visual anchor. From this point radiates a web of lines and shapes that give the print its intricate structure and energy. In the background, a large, seated audience watches. Their presence suggests the weight of public expectation and the tension between creativity and performance.

In some impressions, bright colors make the clown’s nose and the balls stand out vividly. In others, those same elements blend softly into the surrounding patterns. This shifting visibility echoes a central idea of the work: how perception changes with context.

The Black Impression feels heavy and intense. Deep reds, blacks, and whites dominate, with dense lines and dark tones creating a somber mood. The clown seems burdened by his act, isolated under the audience’s gaze, suggesting the loneliness of modern life.

The Green Impression brings a brighter atmosphere. Lively greens, yellows, and golds create a sense of renewal. The clown appears lighter and more at ease, and the image speaks of vitality and connection.

The Yellow Impression takes the image into a dreamlike space. Pastel tones and diffused light make the clown appear to dissolve into glowing air. Here, the clown becomes more than a performer, he is a symbol of transcendence and inner peace, far removed from the crowd’s judgment.

The Rainbow Impression restores playfulness and joy. Bold pinks, greens, blues, and yellows fill the image with celebration. The clown regains his sense of humor, surrounded by color and motion. Yet Reddy’s careful surface treatment ensures that this impression still carries depth and reflection.

Across these four impressions Black, Green, Yellow, and Rainbow the clown shifts from solemn to radiant, from confined to free. Each version explores a different emotional and philosophical space. Together, they reveal The Great Clown as far more than a depiction of circus life. It becomes a meditation on change, perception, and the pressures of being seen and navigating the roles of both performer and self.

The Great Clown embodies Reddy’s belief in printmaking as a living, evolving process. Each impression offers new insight, inviting viewers to see differently. Through this masterwork, Reddy celebrates the richness of perception, the endurance of the creative spirit, and the layered complexities of human experience.

Across these case studies Tuatara, Three Graces, Water Form, Flower, and The Great Clown a consistent picture emerges. Reddy treated each print not as a final product but as a step in an unfolding process. He used the plate as a site of transformation to uncover new visual, emotional, and symbolic possibilities. His method challenged the conventions of printmaking by emphasizing variation over edition, evolution and creativity over finality.

Postwar Printmaking in Paris: Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17

Christina Weyl

When Krishna Reddy joined Atelier 17 in 1951, this avant-garde printmaking studio had only just reopened in Paris after a break of more than a decade. Founded by the British artist Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988), the studio had locations in prewar Paris (1927-1939) and New York (1940-1955) before its return to Paris in 1950. The situation for printmaking in postwar Paris was quite different from what Hayter left behind in 1939 as the Nazis marched towards the French capital, and it was not assured that his workshop would flourish again in the city of its founding. Krishna Reddy’s arrival early in Atelier 17’s postwar trajectory and his eagerness to experiment supercharged the studio’s reintegration into Paris and firmly cemented its position as a leader of cutting-edge technical research.

Atelier 17 is widely recognized as a revolutionary force in the graphic arts and twentieth-century Modernism, more generally. Over its sixty-one-year history, Atelier 17 welcomed over one thousand artists from across the globe who worked collectively and collaboratively to experiment and to push the boundaries of printmaking beyond its traditional functions. 26 Their efforts centered around reviving engraving as a creative and not a reproductive medium, innovating in many metalplate intaglio techniques such as etching, aquatint, sugar lift, and developing viscosity printmaking. The last is an area that Krishna Reddy obviously advanced during his years at Atelier 17 and beyond. For Hayter, Reddy, and other members of Atelier

26 For foundational scholarship about Atelier 17, see Joann Moser, Atelier 17: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition (Madison, WI: Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1977).

17, printmaking was not simply a method for reproducing drawings or making copies of the same image. Instead, they valued each step in the process for its capacity to generate insights and spark creative discovery, whether for their future work in the graphic arts or in their endeavors in painting, sculpture, and collage. Many artists of Atelier 17, in fact, did not produce complete editions, as we have come to understand them a series of identical impressions printed from the same matrix. Prints made at Atelier 17 might instead be highly variable, inked in different color waves, hand-wiped to produce idiosyncratic effects, or signed with different orientations.

Atelier 17’s roster includes a wide spectrum of artists practicing many aesthetic styles and approaches, reflecting the studio’s long history, transcontinental locations, and global membership. Despite this diversity, a few things remained constant for any artist who came to Atelier 17. First, workshop members were rigorously committed to exploring new techniques. Atelier 17 was less a school and Hayter insisted he was not a teacher and in this non-hierarchical context members were expected to share discoveries. The second constant flows from the first: with its unique balance of collective and individual work, Atelier 17 provided an extraordinary space of sociality and the exchange of ideas. Although artists might experience significant challenges in traveling from their home country to New York or Paris, joining Atelier 17’s community was for most all

Currently, The Atelier 17 Project is working to celebrate Atelier 17’s centennial in 2027 by encouraging new research and exhibitions about the workshop and its members.

members a defining experience in their lives and professional careers. Inside or outside the studio, the workshop’s polyglot membership found community and mutual support that have, in many cases, lasted a lifetime.

Fig. 1: Krishna Reddy, untitled relief print landscape, 1942. Multicolor woodblock, image: 8 x 5.5 in, Paper: 11.75 x 7.625 in.

Krishna Reddy did not, ostensibly, come to Paris to join Atelier 17 or to learn more about printmaking, though it is interesting to note he had made some

27 Transcription of interview with Krishna Reddy titled “Environments,” January 25, 1981. Krishna Reddy Papers; MC 244; Box 3, Folder 3; New York University Archives. Reddy says: “In India, I made prints and woodblocks. There were many presses in India. But I was not involved, and I would occasionally do printing, because I always loved graphics.” Thank you to Tyrus Clutter for providing access to his research photos of these interview transcripts.

28 Hayter and Zadkine had become acquainted with each other before the outbreak of World War II, when both

woodblocks in India (fig. 1). 27 By way of study at the Slade School of Art in London, he had the opportunity to learn from the noted British sculptor, Henry Moore. Reddy’s move to Paris facilitated additional instruction in direct carving and modeling from Ossip Zadkine, the Russian-born sculptor who taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. 28 Although Atelier 17’s first location in postwar Paris at 278, rue de Vaugirard was a solid thirty-minute walk away from the Grande Chaumière and the city’s other ateliers libres in Montparnasse, Hayter’s extensive social network kept the workshop connected with Paris’s artistic community. As was typical of student life in Paris and the city’s café culture, which brought people together for socializing around meals and the evenings, Reddy once described in an interview how he began to “meet these printmakers coming from Hayter’s place.” 29 “Slowly,” he continued, “I started working with him [Hayter].”

briefly occupied studios on villa Chauvelot (now villa Santos-Dumont) in the 15th arrondissement. Before settling into his longtime studio at 100 bis, rue d’Assas, Zadkine lived at 3, villa Chauvelot. In the late 1920s, Hayter and his first wife Edith Fletcher occupied the upstairs studio at 23, villa Chauvelot. For more about the artists who lived on this street, see: https://www.lilianlau.com/2014/04/hidden -paris-villasantos-dumont/ 29 Reddy, “Environments,” 1981.

Even as Reddy began to visit Hayter’s studio, he reportedly maintained a very strong interest in sculpture, spending six days with Zadkine and one

Fig. 2: Krishna Reddy, Musician, 1951. Terra cotta.

Fig. 3: Krishna Reddy, Le Musicien, 1953. Etching, aquatint, and engraving, 30.5 x 20.8 cm.

Fig. 4: Krishna Reddy, zinc plate for Le Musicien, 1953.

at Hayter’s studio. 30 With his feet quite literally in both doors, it is no wonder that his first etchings and engravings made at Atelier 17 during the early 1950s integrate his sculptural ideas and subject matter onto a metal plate. In these black-and-white compositions, figures are reclining, posed at tables, or playing instruments. Some bear direct relationships to finished sculptures Reddy completed around the same time, and this association is apparent in a work like The Musician (fig. 2-3) Reddy completed the terra cotta featuring a vertically oriented, standing figure who wraps their arms around a large stringed instrument. In the related print, Reddy created a more dynamic composition by tilting the musician’s body on an angle while adding several deeply engraved swirls a signature technique of Hayter and the Atelier 17 workshop (fig. 4).

It is worth pausing briefly to consider why Reddy spent his entire week working in the studios of either Hayter or Zadkine. As artists from all over the world arrived in Paris, they might only have funds to cover the rent of a small one-room apartment. Workshops like Hayter’s or Zadkine’s known within the city as ateliers libres or “open studios” offered an attractive alternative to the academic environment of the École des Beaux-Arts and were crucial to a young artist’s ability to produce art that they might exhibit or sell. Reddy claimed he had “no facilities” throughout the sixties to produce sculpture. 31 Certainly he did not have space or funds to set up his own printmaking studio, and he relied on access to Atelier 17’s presses and chemicals to produce his prints from the 1950s and 1960s. Beyond their practical advantages, the city’s ateliers libres also provided less experienced artists with the opportunity to mix freely with “the greats,” to borrow Reddy’s words. 32

30 Reddy, “Environments,” 1981.

31 Reddy, “Environments,” 1981.

After an initial period of training and learning the ins-and-outs of engraving and etching, Reddy began to experiment with inking his plates in various color combinations, as can be seen in two variant impressions of the plate for Fish: one in blue, yellow, red, and black and the second (signed in the inverse orientation) in shades of green with red and

32 Reddy, “Environments,” 1981.

Fig. 5: Krishna Reddy, variant impressions of Fish, 1952. Etching, aquatint, and engraving printed in color, 9 ¾ x 13 ¾ in.

Fig. 6: Krishna Reddy, variant impressions of Fish, 1952. Etching, aquatint, and engraving printed in color, 9 ¾ x 13 ¾ in.

black (figs. 5-6). Historically, achieving multi-color intaglio prints was a time-intensive process, usually involving one of three approaches: first, inking à la poupée, a technique where artists would apply spot color by hand to particular areas of the same plate; second, jigsaw plate printing where pieces of a plate would be inked individually and reassembled during printing; and third, printing au repérage, where artists prepare two or more plates and run each separately and in succession through the printing press. 33

33 For more on the history of color printing, see Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching, 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes (London; Houton, Netherlands: Archetype; Hes

and De Graaf, 2012), 347–75; Ad Stijnman and Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour, 1400-1700: History, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (Boston: Brill, 2015).

Fig. 7: Nina Negri, La main de Fatima, 1933. Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe originale de Gravelines, France.

Fig. 8: Nina Negri, Les souffleurs de verre et le feu, 1936. Engraving and soft ground etching in color. Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe originale de Gravelines, France.

Fig 9: Stanley William Hayter, Maternity, 1940. Engraving, soft-ground etching, 9 × 7 1/2 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 10: Stanley William Hayter, Cinq Personnages, 1946. Engraving and soft-ground etching, Plate: 14 15/16 × 24 in. Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia.

As is discussed elsewhere in this volume, Reddy completed these astonishing, multi-color prints with only one pass through the press.

The idea of simplifying the complex problem of multi-color intaglio prints was one that had intrigued Hayter and Atelier 17’s members since the workshop’s earliest days in prewar Paris. Nina Negri, an Argentinian who was among Atelier 17’s first prewar members, experimented in La main de Fatima (1933) with inking the grooves of her plate in dark orange and inking the unetched surface of the plate in yellow (fig. 7). She also overlayed multiple plates, combining a black-and-white inking of the plate for Les souffleurs de verre with the redinked plate for Le feu to create a composite impression (fig. 8). 34 While Atelier 17 was located in New York City, workshop members collaborated to develop a new strategy for color printing whereby they employed silk screen stencils. 35 With his Maternity (1940), Hayter screened blue and orange

34 In his 1949 book, Hayter alludes the prewar effort to print in color but does not cite Negri specifically: “some experiments were made by applying surface color with a roller to an uninked plate, making one impression, then cleaning the plate and inking it, for intaglio printing, in black and reprinting on the same paper.” Stanley William Hayter, New Ways of Gravure (New York: Pantheon, 1949), 158. These two examples by Negri clearly fall within Hayter’s description of the type of experiments prewar members were conducting.

35 At this moment, artists in the United States were increasingly practicing silk screen printmaking thanks to

the efforts of various divisions within the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration and, more specifically, the Graphic Arts Division of the Federal Art Project. During the early 1940s, Hayter knew many artists active in the newly formed Silk Screen Group and penned a somewhat controversial article for Serigraph Quarterly, a publication the group later renamed the National Serigraph Society would issue through the 1950s. Stanley William Hayter, “The Silk Screen,” Serigraph Quarterly I, no. 4 (November 1946): 1.

tempera onto a damp sheet of paper, after which he printed the intaglio plate inked in black (fig. 9). 36

By the middle of the 1940s, Hayter and fellow workshop members most notably Fred Becker, Ezio Martinelli, James Goetz, and Karl Schrag tweaked this process and discovered how to squeegee inks of different viscosities through a silk screen stencil directly onto a copper plate. This plate now loaded with black ink applied into the intaglio lines, plus several levels of stenciled color on the surface would go through the printing press only one time. Hayter’s Cinq Personnages (1946) was their first success with this technique, which eventually would become known as simultaneous color printing (fig. 10). 37

Fig. 11: Krishna Reddy printing at Atelier 17, ca.1961. Reproduced in catalogue for Reddy’s 1961 exhibition at Galleria XXII Marzo, Venice.

12: Kaiko Moti, Fishes, 1955. Engraving, open bite etching, sheet: 22 x 30 in. Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia.

Fig. 13: Shirley Witebsky, L' Arbre, c. 1958. Color etching and aquatint, image: 14" x 17 3/4 in. Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia.

36 Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, 159.

37 The whole process is described in Hayter, 155–61. While Hayter did not use the term “simultaneous color

Reddy’s breakthrough with viscosity printmaking during the 1950s and 1960s flow from this lineage and the longstanding curiosity at Atelier 17 to create multi-color prints. Unquestionably, Reddy built upon the fundamental properties behind printing” in the 1949 edition of New Ways of Gravure, the term does appear in the 1981 edition.

Fig.

Hayter’s simultaneous color printing, namely altering the viscosity of inks. But viscosity printing, as Reddy perfected it, relied on the interplay of inks and transparent color applied with large rollers not screens of varying hardness which would deposit ink onto the topographical levels peaks and valleys of a deeply sculptural plate (fig. 11). As was typical of the workshop collective nature, Reddy developed and refined his methods alongside other members such as fellow Indian transplant Kaiko Moti and Shirley Witebsky, Reddy’s first wife who had come over to France from Minnesota (figs. 12-13). 38 Reddy separated himself from these peers, however, as he became increasingly enchanted with the magic of viscosity printmaking and carving sculptural depths into his metal plates. Over time, he became one of viscosity printmaking’s most visible practitioners, promoting it through his solo exhibitions, participation in European print annuals, and teaching the process to new arrivals at Atelier 17 and later the Color Print Studio at New York University.

Hayter, who always appreciated members who were clever and dedicated to pushing boundaries, quickly took note of this bright and inquisitive young mind. By the early 1960s, Hayter had appointed Reddy to become associate director of Atelier 17. In his introduction to Reddy’s 1961 solo exhibition of prints at Galleria XXII Marzo in Venice which subsequently traveled to Mala Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia Hayter was unreserved in his praise, calling Reddy a “leader and not a follower.” 39 However, Hayter was extremely careful in this text to distinguish between Reddy’s technical achievements and the meaning behind his work. Because scholarship about Reddy’s career

38 The collaborative nature of Reddy’s exploration into viscosity printmaking is worthy of additional scrutiny. I wish to thank Simone Wille, University of Innsbruck, for pointing to the connections between Reddy, Witebsky, and Moti.

39 Stanley William Hayter, “The Prints of Krishna Reddy,” in Krishna Reddy (Venice, Italy: Galleria XXII Marzo Venezia, 1961). Hayter’s text was translated into French and Slovenian when this show traveled to Slovenia: Krishna Reddy (Ljubljana: Mala Galerija, 1961).

over the last half century has tended to prioritize his printmaking process over anything else, it is worth closely reading Hayter’s text from 1961. 40 Atelier 17’s founder believed that technique, in and of itself, was not the path to understanding Reddy or his prints, stating: “If the technique of a print is obtrusive; if we think first how clever must be the man who made a print… it may be that the idea, the message, is insufficient to compel our attention.” 41 Citing the ideas of the Italian art historian, Giulio Carlo Argan, whose writings about modern art explored the interconnectedness of artistic technique and meaning, Hayter likens Reddy’s process of developing his plates to that of a sculptor trying to reveal the “concealed form” within a mass of granite or a scholar painstakingly deciphering the overlayed or effaced text of a palimpsest. 42 Technique alone, Hayter continues, cannot solely account for the images that Reddy has produced. Instead, Hayter concludes: “These images offer not an escape from life, not an evasion of the immediate frustrations and insecurities of the ‘way of life’ that has been imposed upon us, but rather an escape from the nonsense of the idiot round of daily existence into a timeless calm which is the real sense of life.”

Within the history of twentieth-century printmaking, Atelier 17 will always be remembered as a giant in advancing the technical possibilities of printmaking. And Krishna Reddy played a definitive role in building that reputation during the years that Atelier 17 transitioned back to Paris after World War II. Nevertheless, it is critical to remember that Reddy and his closest interlocutors did not want these trailblazing discoveries in viscosity printmaking to become mired in a trap of

40 Sarah Burney, “Heaven in a Wildflower,” in Krishna Reddy: Heaven in a Wildflower (New York: Print Center New York, 2025), 23–38

41 Hayter, “The Prints of Krishna Reddy.” All subsequent quotations in this paragraph are drawn from Hayter’s text.

42 It is not known which of Argan’s writings Hayter had read at the time he wrote the catalogue introduction for Reddy. By 1961, Argan had contributed essays to several Italian-language journals, and his major work on this topic L’arte moderna did not appear until 1970.

“technique for technique’s sake.” 43 Reddy’ innovative viscosity prints reveal as much about what curator Sarah Burney calls a “personal philosophy that positions looking as the beginning of learning” as they do about his desire to share his way of seeing with others. 44

Fig. 14: Stanley William Hayter, About Boats, 1957. Engraving printed in color, 24.5 x 40.9 cm. Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia.

Fig. 15: Stanley William Hayter, copper plate for About Boats, 1957. Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia.

In this regard, Reddy’s involvement in printing Hayter’s About Boats (1957) marks an extraordinary moment of inflection for these two artists (fig. 14). Until this moment, Hayter had continued to practice his screen-printed version of color viscosity printing. But he engaged Reddy to print the plate for About Boats, a “straight” engraving with no additional textural elements added to the plate through soft ground or aquatint (fig. 15). Although we do not know what discussions the two had as the proofing process unfolded, the final edition quite remarkably includes both artists’ techniques of applying color. 45

Fig. 16: Benjamin Levy, diagram of the printing of About Boats. (1st DRAFT, to be revised if a diagram is included in the book)

43 Christina Weyl, The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York (New York and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 46.

44 Burney, “Heaven in a Wildflower,” 23.

45 Thank you to Ron Rumford for suggesting the importance of About Boats in Hayter’s oeuvre and the impact of Reddy’s process on Hayter’s later approach to viscosity printing.

46 Thank you to Benjamin Levy, the Lucienne M. Glaubinger Curator of Works on Paper at Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum of Art, for creating a

As seen in the nearby diagram, Reddy would have started by inking the plate’s engraved lines in black (fig. 16). 46 Next, he transferred yellow ink to the plate via Hayter’s screen-printed viscosity process to define the three solid, boat-like shapes. Drawing on his own practice, Reddy created the textural effect of crumpled paper with a more viscous, tacky orange ink. Most likely, Reddy rolled orange ink onto a slab and removed some of it by dabbing a crumpled paper into the surface. The resulting, textural “imprint” of crumpled paper left on the slab was then transferred by means of a clean roller onto the relief surface of the copper plate, already inked in black (intaglio) and yellow relief (Hayter’s viscosity method). 47 Finally, he employed a softer

mock-up of the likely printing process behind About Boats For information about the printing progression, see no. 238 in Désirée Moorhead, “The Prints of Stanley William Hayter,” in The Prints of Stanley William Hayter: A Complete Catalogue, ed. Désirée Moorhead and Peter Black (Mount Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1992).

47 Examining (via digital image) a few impressions of About Boats (Dolan/Maxwell, Moorhead/Black catalogue raisonné, and recent sale at Bonhams [14 June 2022, lot 79]) shows variations in the structure of the crumpled paper. This evidence supports Levy’s theory that the

roller to transfer a slightly less viscous, violet ink across the entire plate surface, which reached into areas not already covered by yellow or orange. Very clearly, Hayter admired the final results Reddy achieved in About Boats, because the prints he would make over the next several years rely exclusively on Reddy’s viscosity method.

17: Stanley William Hayter, Cascade, 1959. Etching printed in colors, plate: 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 in. Baltimore Museum of Art.

Furthermore, Hayter’s editions from 1958-1959 center around the movements of water and aquatic creatures and plants, as can be seen in his masterful print titled Cascade (fig. 17) inspired by a waterfall near his home in Alba-la-Romaine where his family spent summers. Here, we can see Reddy’s profound effect on Hayter, not just in a technical sense but in Reddy’s extraordinary capacity to inspire artists around him to become careful observers of nature and its great mysteries.

orange comes from offsetting the “texture” of crumpled paper via a clean roller. The slab with orange “texture” would have had to be refreshed after each transfer and

the soft roller cleaned after every roll onto the copper plate.

Fig.

Krishna Reddy: The Movement of Life

Heather Hughes

In this essay, Heather Hughes explores Krishna Reddy’s nature-based prints from the 1950s to the 1970s, highlighting how the rhythms, patterns, and energies of the natural world informed his artistic vocabulary. Her essay situates these prints as meditative responses to life’s continual evolution deeply grounded in observation, yet elevated into metaphysical inquiry.

From Line to Form: Krishna Reddy’s Evolution into Figuration

Carol Huh

This essay will explore the late-career shift in Krishna Reddy’s printmaking practice, in which the artist, long celebrated for his lyrical abstractions and innovations in viscosity printing, turned toward distinctly figurative imagery. The essay situates Reddy’s figures not as a break from his earlier concerns with texture, motion, and metaphysical energy but rather as a deepening of those concerns through the vehicle of the human form.

Imagining Space: Krishna Reddy and Mid-20th Century Abstraction

Jeffrey Wechsler

As described in previous essays in this book, Krishna Reddy was a major figure in the history of 20thcentury printmaking, developing various stylistic devices and personal forms of imagery, as well as contributing to significant technical advances, particularly color viscosity printmaking. His work also fits well into major pictorial interests and experiments of Western modernism from about 1940 to 1970, most notably the development of an

abstract spatiality, best known within organic surrealism and early forms of Abstract Expressionism.

It can be argued that the key break of Western modernist art from preceding traditional forms of art – and its primary visual achievement – is found in its new approaches to the rendering of space. For centuries, artists strove to create the illusion of natural physical space in pictorial terms by means of

1 Krishna Reddy Flight, 1963

linear perspective or atmospheric perspective, and a sense of palpable volume in objects through shading and foreshortening. In the modern era, artists devised alternative concepts and methodologies that either enhanced or superseded how space was previously understood and depicted.

In terms of painting, modernism seems to have traveled two paths in its quest to transcend the standardized approaches to space used in the past. One path ultimately led to the most radical examples of two-dimensional fine art, paradoxically by embracing an utterly simple and self-evident physical fact: a painting is a flat surface. Within the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Impressionists, by means of dispersion of brushstrokes into discrete marks which at times incompletely covered or even revealed the bare canvas, managed to compress and de-emphasize any suggested space. By the Post-Impressionist period, this basis of this tendency was straightforwardly declared through the noted 1890 comment by the artist Maurice Denis: "Remember that a painting – before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of some sort – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors, put together in a certain order". Not too long after this statement, the notion of a painting as just a composition of color and shapes led to total abstraction, whether with expressionist brushwork, as with Wassily Kandinsky, or with severe geometry, as with Kasimir Malevich. Indeed, in the most extreme variations, the sense of space might be almost entirely removed, as in early 20th-century geometric abstract painting, or the Minimalist art of the 1960s. This reductive manner even suffused aspects of Abstract Expressionism, especially in color field painting, as in the work of Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko and Morris Louis; critics who supported this style stressed the artist’s presumed integrity of not violating the flat “picture plane” of the painting.

The other path within the non-traditional reaction toward pictorial space, however, drew artists who

appreciated the new creative freedoms afforded by eliminating the need for fully imitative rendering of physical space, yet believed it was unnecessary to thoroughly discard every vestige of implied illusion of depth. This was, perhaps, a more complex, subtle approach. The essential source of such art may reasonably be claimed to be exemplified by the art of Paul Cézanne in his paintings but even more convincingly by his watercolors; in the latter, overlapping patches of translucent color manage to trigger a perception of naturalistic depth while retaining their actual physical integrity as mere spots of color on a flat surface. A semirepresentational or semi-abstract imagery that evoked a sensation of depth without replicating forms in an utterly realistic manner was achieved.

Once Cézanne’s accomplishment was appreciated by other artists, a visual floodgate was opened, and a multitude of abstract styles with spatial experimentation emerged – from Cubism to organic surrealism, to certain forms of Abstract Expressionism. However, as is often the case in the occasionally promotional activity of art criticism, extremes may be claimed as more “advanced”. Styles that straddle a middle ground are regarded as not sufficiently adventurous, and thus can be overlooked within standard surveys of art history. By not completely sweeping away any remnants of realistic space from their work, or in fact purposely maintaining varying proportional glimpses and suggestions of pictorial three-dimensionality, artists who explored this unusual realm of partial or irregular spatiality may be ignored because they do not represent a manner marked by clear stylistic boundaries.

Krishna Reddy’s work may be seen as residing in such an art historical gray area. Although properly lauded by those who specialize in the print media (and printmaking itself remains a relatively underappreciated medium in general terms), Reddy is a prime example of an artist who flourished within this imprecise, somewhat hybrid mid-century style that finds expression in many media –

including painting, printmaking, and sculpture – but has rarely been discussed. This tendency, while rather chimerical in form, represented experimentation with the idea of space in art, in various degrees of abstraction. Importantly, it was practiced by a very large number of artists in the United States and Europe, comprising a widespread subset within modernism, primarily from the 1940s to the 1970s, a period when Reddy initiated, developed and expanded upon both his personal imagery and innovative print techniques. Within this essay, illustrations will indicate that Reddy continued to employ and elaborate upon these ideas and methods through the later years of his career.

The spatial effects of the style practiced by Reddy and his contemporaries have roots primarily in organic surrealism (for example, the works of Joan Miró, André Masson, and Roberto Matta), wherein artists experimented with freely applied media including ink, pencil, watercolor, gouache, oil and many others, often accepting or even encouraging accidental effects, within a manner labeled automatism. Most pertinent here are the images fashioned from loosely applied, sometimes watery and flowing pigments, displaying shapes with indefinite contours, placed in vague, misty environments.

In this style, two-dimensional art played a visual game of cat-and-mouse with the pre-modernist devices of suggesting space. At times, spatial indicators might seem quite normal, separating objects or having them recede into the background. But in other images, space would appear somehow twisted or interrupted, even condensing into semisolid fogs or odd concentrations of color that looked almost tangible. Variations upon traditional perspective mixed with the early 20th-century methodology of Cubism became jumping-off points for semi-abstract enhancement and complexity. For example, in Reddy’s Sun Worshipers (figure 2), a

progression of foreshortened squares in conjunction with horizontal lines arrayed at the top and bottom suggests a corridor receding into the distance. But the overall spatial cohesion of the scene is interrupted by the welter of irregular, short, and diffuse vertical markings that confuse the view and seep into its atmosphere. In Child in Space (figure 3), the title indicates Reddy’s main pictorial concern. The “child” is an abstraction, merely a suggested figuration of fragmented lines and colors. Space fills most of the image – an imprecise space where neither depth nor a horizon line are truly defined.

Ultimately, as related to the two sources noted above, Reddy’s art is best regarded as a purposeful hybrid, intermingling geometric and expressionist

2. Krishna Reddy, Sun Worshipers, 1976

3. Reddy, Child in Space, 1974

tendencies within a matrix of fluctuating spatial cues.

Thus, the examples of the spatially-inflected art discussed here manage to freely interact with aspects of two general styles – the linearism of constructivism and geometric abstraction, and the malleable imagery of Abstract Expressionism. On first consideration, a gathering of such art might logically lead one to expect a tumult of pictorial visions, perhaps even a few that appear somewhat contradictory in visual intention or aspect. So be it: it must be accepted that the parameters of this subject and its imagery are broad and diffuse, which is a probable and practical reason why this “spatial art” has never cohered into an art-historically recognized style. Yet by dint of the art’s diversity, by its multiple manners of manipulating space, and by the very large number of artists who explored this direction in varying personal ways at a particular moment in history, this slippery style warrants recognition. Appended to a study of a particular artist – Krishna Reddy – this brief essay not only identifies Reddy as an important proponent of the style but submits a relatively small grouping of individuals derived from a much larger potential array of artists; it simply acts as an introduction to a modernist mode that, in a sense, has been hiding in plain sight. The artists involved had reputations ranging from quite prominent, to moderately recognized, to currently rather obscure. And while the spatial properties of their art were often noted within commentaries on individuals, the breadth and significance of their overall stylistic interrelationships await greater appreciation and presentation.

From the 1930s onward, the two major modes of spatial experiment – geometry and automatism developed simultaneously. Sometimes they intermixed, to varying degrees, within the oeuvre of certain artists, as already noted in Reddy’s prints. In the context of the wider interest in new ways of portraying space, the work of many artists presented the complex results of simultaneous

experimentation with geometric and more freely rendered spatial effects within one picture. For example, in her paintings, Irene Rice Pereira hewed rather closely to prevalent forms of geometric abstraction, but often dispersed her hard-edged shapes in a manner that suggested levitation or floating, and further implied an atmosphere by means of areas of loosely applied paint (figure 4).

John Hultberg created compelling floating linear networks that resolved into fragmentary frameworks, columns, corridors, buildings, and even cities; these he combined with imprecise intimations of atmospheric phenomena, as well as knots of space in a seemingly transitional state of condensation (figure 5).

4. Irene Rice Pereira, Life Reserving Itself

Many of Reddy’s prints use more restrained atmospheric effects; their subjects suggested more severe linearism and muted color, so they must –quite literally – be less “painterly”. A few serendipitous bits of imagery offer insight into this situation. The Pereira painting and Reddy’s Violence and Sorrow (figure 6) both use black squares or rectangles that are prominent and function as strong compositional elements. However, the overall atmospheric effects of the Pereira are conveyed through delicate brushwork and blending varied color areas; depth in the Reddy print is produced through the perspectival lines in the central vertical section, creating a suggested shallow space, but generally employing a flat, tonally restrained appearance in the rest of the surface.

For another comparison, one might look at Figure 5 and then imagine that the grid occupying the lower part of Hultberg’s painting is grasped and placed upright, parallel to the picture plane. One would then perceive a trellis-like structure of squarish units – rather like the grid in the Reddy print in Figure 7. Once again, Reddy’s color throughout the print, despite its variability, generally retains a restrained sense of space flatness. But the clown of the print’s title becomes a strong, if ethereal, presence. Paradoxically, the brushy, semitransparent swirling of blue in the Hultberg is specifically noted in the work’s title as a “ship form”, an identification that the blue abstraction very likely would never evoke from an uninformed viewer.

Because of Reddy’s flexibility in the development and selection of his imagery, his prints frequently can be used as intriguing visual pairings with other artists who participated in the widespread and protean exploration of mid-20th century spatial effects, if only to show how varying intentions can produce somewhat parallel imagery, bolstering the notion of the remarkably diverse but curiously cohesive evidence of this style. Herewith, two more pairings.

Maria Vieira De Silva developed a signature vision of what might be called atmospheric architecture, whereby individual buildings or cityscapes (recognizable or implied) are dematerialized within

5. John Hultberg, Ship Form in Sky, 1990

6. Krishna Reddy, Violence and Sorrow, 1994

7. Krishna Reddy, The Clown Dissolving, 1997

vague, misty environments where the scenes depicted, and perspective itself, may undergo fragmentation, contortion or dissolution. In Figure 8, a relatively monochrome gray-white suffuses a rendition of a city street, which is recognizable primarily by the remnants of perspective at the lower right, but ultimately becomes a patchwork of long and short brushstrokes, melting away most indications of standard reality, blending objects and atmosphere into a form of semi-abstract field painting. This extreme dissipation of an image is also found in Figure 9; Reddy tells observers that they are witnessing a Clown Forming. The image of a clown, usually just the head, is a major recurring motif in Reddy’s prints (and titles), but one is hardpressed to discover any prominent depiction of a clown in a large proportion of them. Here, Vieira de Silva and Reddy are pursuing a similar concept from different ends; for one, a city scene is broken down, its solid forms eroded by and commingled with the surrounding air, and for the other a thin aura of color and delicate lines is presumably coalescing toward a central point from which a clear face or figure will appear – quite a crowd-pleasing magic trick for a clown, one would imagine!

Reddy’s clown continues its Cheshire Cat-like materializing antics in The Great Clown (figure 10) At first glance, one might first focus on the bright red-pink circles, and imagine floating orbs, planets or even stars spread upon the background of black space. Are the vertical and horizontal linear elements bursts of light from a nova or other phenomenon in space? But if one looks closely at the red circle at the image’s center (this is a particularly dark state of a print produced in five states), something appears from the darkness – a clown’s face, and the central circle is his bright red false nose. And at either end of the horizontal element are hands; the clown is juggling balls, which form an arc pattern amidst the other circles. The clown becomes real, although composed mostly of empty space, which links the work to aspects of Reddy’s imagery that implies nature and space through abstract means, such as Flight (figure. 1).

The first impression of The Great Clown as an astronomical image is echoed and emphasized in Gordon Onslow-Ford’s Clear All Clear (fig. 11), in which trails of glowing circles share an active, crowded space with spirals and squiggles, all strikingly painted in black and white. Based on an early interest in automatism and organic surrealism reaching back to the late 1930s, the oeuvre of Onslow-Ford incorporated a huge but visibly connected range of imagery, from compositions

8. Maria Vieira de Silva, The City, 1950-51 (MOMA)

9. Krishna Reddy, Clown Forming, 1981

which emphasized flat surfaces and shapes to those which suspended the organic forms of automatism in shallow spaces rendered via abstract techniques, to the non-objective space phenomena hinted at by Clear all Clear and other works. Like Reddy, Onslow-Ford considered both the “macro” and “micro” aspects of nature, reasoning that abstraction could render the essential aspects of both. Thus, Reddy could create an image of a clown disguised behind a spatial veneer of the cosmic, and Onslow-Ford could summon thoughts of the universal via mere spots and simple yet energetic twists of a brush.

But beyond the occasional yet valid similarities of spatial concerns with other artists found within Reddy’s art, Reddy participated in a true group effort that placed an aesthetic exploration of space at its core. This was Atelier 17, where its founder, Stanley William Hayter, was a figure of great importance in the dissemination and uptake of automatism to a large contingent of artists. Atelier 17 became of enormous consequence for the medium of printmaking in Paris and New York (the studio and Reddy’s significant role in it is discussed more extensively in earlier chapters of this book). Hayter’s dedication to the automatist approach to art as well as the development at Atelier 17 of the viscosity intaglio method of printmaking, which allowed new and complex color effects produced a major infusion of organic surrealist spatial concepts into the New York art world in the critical years of 1940 to 1950. He produced prints which combined active linear motifs with swirling, spatial

10. Krishna Reddy, The Great Clown, 1981

11. Gordon Onslow-Ford, Clear All Clear, 1978

networks, evoking a sense of the organic and cosmic (figures 13 and 14). Although Reddy frequently followed his own personal and inventive path, some of his work shows relationships to that of Hayter and other artists at Atelier 17. But he created his own variations on the highly linear, spatially suggestive motifs often preferred by Hayter and others at the studio, which featured long curves and meandering webs (as in figures 1316). Reddy’s variations (such as figure 12) often developed vaguely figural motifs, with condensed linear networks seeming to enclose them.

The scores of artists who trained at Atelier 17 further explored and expanded upon this imagery. For example, Sue Fuller, who is best known for her linear/spatial sculptures in wire and string (which are themselves examples of the abstract spatial concepts discussed here), made many prints that relied on a layering effect, offering hints of shallow space (figure 15).

12. Krishna Reddy, The Praying Woman, 1970

13. Stanley William Hayter, Unfolding, 1945-46

14. Stanley William Hayter, Sirėne, 1958

Others who worked at Atelier 17 produced personal variations of what almost might be regarded as a “house style” of sorts, relying on different applications of linearism, illusory depth, and atmospheric color; as examples, consider works by Fuller, Jan Gelb and Minna Citron (figures 15-17). All represent personal variations within the general interest in spatial experimentation that marked the period.

Certain interesting visual comparisons can be noted between specific elements and details of two of these works and two prints by Reddy. Citron’s Flight to Tomorrow (figure 17) suspends irregular shapes against a background of contrasting (though somewhat murky) color, with the composition tied together by a loose linear network. Reddy’s Insect (figure 18) presents related structural and figureground relationships, teasing the viewer’s eye as to whether the abstract space implied is shallow or deep – or a combination of atmospheric levels. Both Reddy’s Child in Space (figure 3) and Jan Gelb’s Hyaline Pavane (figure 16) play with a favorite form of perceptual trickery seen in organic surrealism and transitional abstract expressionism – the implied yet undefined horizon line. This device has

15. Sue Fuller, The Sailor’s Dream, 1944,

16. Jan Gelb, Hyaline Pavane, 1954

17. Minna Citron, Flight to Tomorrow, 1948)

18. Krishna Reddy, Insect, 1952

been used by artists as diverse as Yves Tanguy, Matta, and Mark Rothko. Whether placed high, as in Reddy’s print, or centrally, as in Gelb’s print, a softly rendered horizontal line or band offers indistinct and sometimes contradictory visual cues, leading to a spatially confusing image. The prints by Gelb and Reddy also present a few intriguing compositional similarities, such as the relative emptiness of the composition, dominated by pale yellow or ocher fields, punctuated by meandering lines, and a curious bottle-shaped form at the left acting as the most prominent “object”.

Created in the 1940s and early 1950s, the previous set of Atelier 17 artworks were created within the initial period of Abstract Expressionism’s development, and represent examples of how printmaking adapted the style to its special technical characteristics. Atelier 17 was one significant source among many of this space-related art as derived from organic surrealism and its vital technique of automatism, in which visual interpretations of space itself and natural phenomena – with allusions from the atomic to the biological to the geological to the cosmic – are presented in semi-abstract terms. In such art, irregular shapes and amorphous forms exist within environments suffused by lambent, diaphanous veils and pools of light – a light which itself sometimes seems to congeal into a semi-solid form. The suggestion of space, whether shallow or deep, but always somehow fractured or indistinct, is a persistent hallmark of the panoply of personalized imagery that flowed from this concept.

World War II brought many European artists to New York, among whom were surrealists who embraced organic surrealism and automatism, such as Andre Masson, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. However, of particular significance to the New York School was the Chilean-born Roberto Matta, who arrived in New York in 1939, just in time for his organic, abstract visions, replete with complex explorations of spatial effects (figure 19) to make a major impact on many developing figures of Abstract Expressionism, such as Mark Rothko (figure 20).

Such works emphasize the spatial effects available to painters, using fluid mediums that could be dripped, poured, intermixed, and otherwise manipulated in very free techniques that offered many ways to produce spatial complexity. Although such methodologies were basically beyond the purview of printmakers, the general spatial tendencies were still possible, as we have seen. Also, some of the favored imagery of organic surrealism was fully shared by painters and printmakers. Among these images was the ambiguous “personage”, an abstract figure, usually vertical, built of distorted forms, often fragmentary and commingling with the space around it (or within it). A Rothko-Reddy comparison (figures 20

19. Roberto Matta, The Bachelors Twenty Years After, 1943

20. Mark Rothko, Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, 1944

and 21) illustrates this mannerism nicely. The erect but hazy figures of both artists are interpenetrated by light and atmosphere, partially merging them with their environment. And despite the inherent technical advantages given to painters just mentioned above, the important technique of viscosity printing, of which Reddy was a prime innovator, offered a new range of color effects to printmakers. Described in more detail earlier in this book, the simultaneous overlaying, partial blending and textural potential of viscosity printing produced its own expansive latitude of visual qualities that worked well with the spatial interests of the time.

The investigation of new spatially centered styles encouraged the extensive ranks of somewhat lesser-known artists whose work reflects Matta’s inventions in conjunction with the nature-based concerns of organic surrealism. These include Gerome Kamowski, Boris Margo, and Jimmy Ernst (figures 22, 23, 25).

21. Krishna Reddy, The Clown and the Flying Swans, 1980

22. Gerome Kamrowski, Hieronymi , 1943)

23. Boris Margo, From an Ominous Chord, 1945 (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York)

24. Krishna Reddy, Fish, 1952

Their images were visual cousins of a sort to Reddy’s interests, with Margo producing a large print output as well. Note the general similarities of the Kamrowski and Margo works to Reddy’s Fish (figure 24), wherein flattened, abstracted vegetal and animal forms with varying degrees of transparency or opacity shuttle through ambiguous spatial environments. In developing Fish, Reddy wondered “how a bundle of cells come together,… I had the feeling that space itself is creating the fish.”

48 Jimmy Ernst’s Due East (figure 25) focuses on linear structures that support columns or auras of light, set before a vague, fluctuating space with a suggestively cosmic background. Reddy also used linear structures with mysteriously lit atmospheres, capturing the vitalism of organic surrealism, as indicated by the title of his Life Movement (figure 26). Significantly, all these artists produced work in

the earlier years of Abstract Expressionism, and onward, but often chose to oscillate between semifiguration, abstracted shapes, and fully nonobjective passages, inviting less regard from critics who pursued and praised a supposedly purer, wholly nonobjective vision.

Beyond two-dimensional art, sculpture was an important aspect of the wider trend of mid-20th century artistic spatial exploration. Krishna Reddy, of course, is best known as a printmaker, although he did begin his artistic career as a sculptor. Although all sculptors must to some extent take spatial effects into consideration, it can paradoxically be said that Reddy’s true contributions to spatiality were concentrated in his innovative printmaking. However, the plates that Reddy produced for his prints are extraordinarily complex due to the varying planar levels necessary for the viscosity printing technique. Indeed, Reddy considered these plates to be a form of sculpture.

Among Reddy’s free-standing sculptures are some with arrays of abstracted vertical personages, at times linked together. Considering Reddy’s tendency toward organic and nature-based themes, certain works by the Abstract Expressionist sculptor Ibram Lassaw offer fruitful comparison to aspect of some of Reddy’s two- and three-dimension work. Lassaw’s Symbiosis not only provides a title suggesting organic interaction but is formed of joined vertical forms; these are highly textured and multicolored, resembling writhing tubular plants and animals, or coral and other undersea life in openwork structures (figure 27). In such sculptures, the volume taken up by empty space far exceeds that occupied by solid material.

48 Krishna Reddy, quoted in (Bronx Museum of Art), (full reference needed)

25. Jimmy Ernst, Due East, 1961

26. Krishna Reddy, Life Movement, 1972

Following another evidently biological path, Leo Amino used plastic to create a vision of amoeboid forms or other shapes floating within transparent, organic masses (figure 28).

After a period of using wood, Amino was likely the first American artist to use plastic as his exclusive medium; his works of that type commenced in the late 1940s. The transparency of plastic allowed a particularly clever adaptation of organic surrealism, offering an imaginative X-ray view of various animal and vegetal forms, while also presenting the solid body of the sculpture to read as “empty” space. Among sculptors contemporary to Reddy, Amino’s art of the 1940s and 1950s, in particular, brings us back to Reddy’s imagery, and does so in two ways. First, some of Amino’s sculptures were relatively thin and planar, with colors and small forms visually similar to the drifting two-dimensional spots and lines of Reddy’s prints. Secondly, both Reddy and Amino were fascinated by the internal intricacies of organic life (figures 29 and 30) but abstracted them to suggest their relation to wider realms of existence, with Reddy often hinting at cosmic phenomena.

27. Ibram Lassaw, Symbiosis, 1960

28. Leo Amino, Refractional #8, 1947 (Zimmerli Art Museum)

29. Leo Amino, Carnivorous Plant, 1952

49 Ratnottama Sengupta, Krishna’s Cosmos: The Creativity of an Artist, Sculptor & Teacher, (Ahmedabad, India, Mapin Publishing, 2003), 52

From within the multiplicity of artistic forms noted above, Krishna Reddy offered a singular vision of the mid-twentieth century preoccupation with imagining new renditions of space. As one writer suggested, Reddy’s “spiritual curiosity into the natural world led him to contact with the cosmos and visualize that on a 2-D space.” 49 In that pursuit, Reddy delved into the natural world, overlaying the visual essence of organic life with a sense of the universal. In Figure 30, Reddy’s subject is nominally a Jellyfish, but the overall impression of the image is a flickering view into space and the starry universe. Indeed, the image was inspired by the initial Sputnik orbiting in space; this created for Reddy “a sensation in me, resulting in the liquid space with the emerging shape of a water form.” 50 In devising this sort of conceptually flexible image that can evoke many interpretations and spatial implications, Reddy was among the contingent of like-minded explorers, some of whom are brought together in this essay, who comprised a multifaceted style that merits further study and recognition.

50 Krishna Reddy, quoted in (Bronx Museum of Art) (full reference to come)

30. Reddy, Tuatara Forming , 1953

30. Reddy, Jellyfish, 1955

Passing the Torch: Krishna Reddy and Generations of Printmakers

Judith Brodsky

Contemplating the Krishna Reddy prints in the collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the works, but also with how they were connected to my own development as an artist and teacher. To see how Reddy created such poetic images was beyond belief in their individuality and invention treasures to excite viewers forever and an inspiration for artists to create works through printmaking.

When I went to graduate school in the 1960s I enrolled in a beginning printmaking course. As an undergraduate, I had written an honors thesis on the great British printmaker, William Hogarth, but I had never made prints myself. Taking this course changed my life. I fell in love with printmaking.

I was fortunate to becoming a printmaker in the 1960s, the period of the printmaking renaissance in the United States. June Wayne had founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop and Tatyana Grosman, United Limited Art Editions (ULAE), both introducing major American artists to the possibilities in printmaking. Books about contemporary printmaking emerged. I took more printmaking classes and began experimenting with various techniques. I bought all the available texts on prints and on printmaking processes, and I discovered Krishna Reddy. His prints were like no others that were being created. It was an epiphany.

The 1960s were tense years, full of violent events that would change the world: the vicious assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King; the brutalities of the Civil Rights Movement and the horrors of the Vietnam War. One couldn’t be alive and not be affected.

Many artists retreated from expressing their feelings. Minimalism dominated the period. But others, like me, wondered how to convey our feelings through our work. Printmaking in the Western world has been associated with emotion since its origins in the 15th century. Publication of broadsides expressing all kinds of grievances and dissent was one of the earliest uses of printmaking. The power in its very materials and processes suggests action gouging and carving with sharp tools into resistant materials like copper and wood.

Krishna Reddy’s prints provided answers. Intaglio prints are created on metal plates. The images were traditionally developed in several ways engraving directly into the plate with a sharp tool or using acid-resistant grounds to cover the plate and then exposing the surface of the plate by drawing through the ground. Reddy transformed intaglio printmaking by treating the surface of the plate as a fluid substance to be gouged by his engraving tools and acids to produce effects unprecedented in the history of printmaking. His gestural forms, wave-like shapes, powerful linear elements, and rich explosive color were inspiring and freed artists to create prints that would convey an expressiveness from within that was impossible through traditional methods.

Reddy, born and educated in India, was exposed to Indian modernism, having had the opportunity to study at the experimental university founded by Nobelist, Rabindranath Tagore, who brought a broad international perspective to his teaching. Tagore traveled frequently to England, other European countries, and the United States and was

involved with late 19th and early 20th century modernist writers and philosophers such as William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. Tagore believed that it was as important to study the sciences as well as the humanities, and Reddy studied botany and zoology as well as art and literature those courses resulting in his lifelong use of forms from nature in his prints.

After studying with Tagore, Reddy’s academic journey took him to London and the Slade School where he came into contact with the prominent British 20th century sculptor Henry Moore and was introduced to Western abstraction, expressionism, and surrealism. At the same time, Indian philosophic principles of community and collaboration had been the approach in his earlier education, those principles perhaps being what led him to his extraordinary impact as a teacher as well as an artist.

Reddy is best known for his viscosity printing system in which by using varying amounts of oil in the ink, the printmaker can apply colors all at once rather than separately on multiple plates, the standard system for centuries. Not recognized sufficiently are other innovations introduced by Reddy, such as etching some sections of the plate very deeply while in other sections, the depth of the image remains shallow, thus holding the ink differently. Reddy also was one of the first printmakers to experiment with collograph, the process of adding cardboard, textile fragments, and other materials to the plate. I began to use his innovations, even to the point of departing from the rectangular plate of traditional etching. I created shaped plates such as the image illustrated here where I shaped the plate through leaving it in a strong acid bath overnight.

Fig. 1 - Judith K. Brodsky, Anonymous Icon, 1968, etching, aquatint, shaped plate, 24 x 18 inches

While Reddy’s innovations gave me a way of working that expanded my creative process. It wasn’t just the technical aspects. It was Reddy’s philosophy behind it, making printmaking more responsive to expressiveness. Not only for me but for all artists who have come to printmaking since Reddy, his innovations opened the way to thinking past the conventional way of inking plates to allow for individual invention and variation. Printmaking became a process that encourages variation and experimentation rather than abiding by a set of rules.

At Atelier 17 with which he was associated for so many years, he brought the concepts of 20th century modernism into etching. Using the simple principle that different amounts of oil in the ink would either accept or reject another ink layer (think of how oil and vinegar reject each other in salad dressing) artists could create prints that

convey emotional content through gestural brush strokes and non-objective forms. Through their apparent spontaneity, Reddy’s prints express the same authenticity of feeling found in the paintings of Joan Mitchell or Jackson Pollock.

Reddy’s prints are insights into the realm of the spirit, the ineffable, the artist’s unconscious rather than connected to the descriptive. Lithography easily achieved that goal, being a planographic medium (meaning that the image is created on a flat surface rather than incised) on which artists could use brushes, but until viscosity printing, it was impossible to achieve that quality given the linear character and defined edges that are present in an etching, even in an aquatint. I became so involved in viscosity printing that I must have had 30 brayers of different sizes and different degrees of hardness or softness.

In addition to introducing the innovative techniques that transformed intaglio printmaking into a medium for contemporary artmaking that expresses the artist’s inner being, Reddy was a consummate teacher. He found his home at Atelier 17 where he spent decades mentoring dozens, possibly hundreds of artists. The abstract sculptor Sue Fuller was one of those artists. Like Reddy, Fuller used line as an element in itself, rather than as a descriptive tool, creating images like the one illustrated here.

While there is no direct evidence to link her experience at Atelier 17 with her string sculptures, the connection to Reddy’s use of line as abstract form suggests the possibility. When I look at the

Fig. 2 - Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers III, 1972, published by Maeght, etching and aquatint, 27 x 17 inches

Fig. 3 - Sue Fuller

Fig. 4 - Chitra Ganesh, Delicate Line-Corpse She Was Holding, silkscreen, lithograph, monotype, relief, glitter, 2010

prints, animations, and paintings of Chitra Ganesh, it is exciting to see Krishna Reddy evoked by her use of line as an expressive element in this print despite the decades between Reddy’s active years in the 20th century and her studio practice in the 21st century. One can’t help but see a connection between two artists from India (Ganesh is American, but of Indian ancestry) in their common interest in expressiveness and use of elements from the natural world. The abstract sculptor, Louise Nevelson’s prints also show Reddy’s impact. I was struck especially by seeing Minna Citron’s prints similar to the vibrant untitled painting illustrated below. The succession of vignettes in both works can almost be read as language metonyms for a rapid set of sensations.

Reddy himself would comment on how fortunate he felt to have been at Atelier 17 when the great artists of the previous abstract and surreal generation were there Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, and Arp among others. Reddy used surreal botanical forms like those in Miro’s prints and paintings or the cellular structures of Jean Arp, but through his own perception, one closer to today in terms of reflecting quantum mechanics the fluidity of the world versus the more static images of Miro and Arp.

Reddy’s imagery seems particularly related to artists of the 1950s and onward who like Reddy, were and are inspired by nature. The resemblance of Jay DeFeo’s The Rose and a print like Reddy’s Germination (is striking. Both date from the same period: DeFeo worked on The Rose from 1958–1966 and Germination dates from 1961. Each work is composed around a central point from which everything else explodes, enormously powerful in evoking an emotional outburst, yet not threatening. They retain a sense of nature like a flower exploding into bloom or a breeze blowing off the seeds from a dandelion. Reddy himself succinctly conveyed what he saw as the goal in an artist’s work: "If we can express ourselves genuinely, it touches: it is universal."

Fig. 5 - Louise Nevelson, The Ancient Garden, etching, 15 x 18 inches

Fig. 6 - Minna Citron, Untitled, acrylic, 18 x 24 inches

Splash in the use of the movement of water to express feeling.

Artists in the 21st century continue to use nature to evoke their inner sensations. Pat Steir’s recurring images of waterfalls can be compared to Reddy’s

Fig. 7 - Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 9 x 7 feet, 1958-1966

Fig. 8 - Krishna Reddy, Germination, etching, 1961

Fig. 9 - Pat Steir, Diptych (Red), 2015, monoprint, 72 x 44

Fig. 10 - Krishna Reddy, Splash, 1962, 14 x 18 inches

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith’s Hunter of Hungry Horse, which she worked on in 1979 echoes the dramatic fragmentation that is present in so many of Reddy’s prints. She elicits the strong feeling she has about preserving the land, a feeling so integral to Native American culture, not unlike Reddy’s devotion to nature. And the anger behind her image is reminiscent of Reddy’s Demonstrators sculpture and print created in response to the demonstrations in Paris in 1968 when thousands of students and artists, including Reddy, marched in the streets protesting government authoritarianism, imperialism, and disruption of civil rights. Another example reminiscent of Reddy’s deep feelings about nature are the Dogon prints of the color field painter, Sam Gilliam, created in 2005. The name refers to the African Dogon people known for their advanced knowledge of astronomy. The repetitive overlapping patterns of lines suggest the universe at the same time that they reference African repetitive textile designs.

Krishna Reddy’s position at Stanley William Hayter’s workshop in Paris and New York University meant that he himself, taught his methods to many artists. His innovations spread beyond the United States to artists in countries across Europe including those in Eastern Europe, and to other continents particularly, India, Japan, the Middle East and South Africa. Reddy was a consummate teacher and like me, many of the artists he worked with at Atelier 17 became teachers and passed on Reddy’s ideas to next generations as I did. I went on to teach at Rutgers University where I established the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper to provide residencies for women artists and artists of color to create new work in printmaking and hand papermaking during the 1980s when the art world still privileged white male artists. During its years at Rutgers, the Center hosted more than 400 artists (let alone hundreds of students) who were exposed to the wonders of printmaking. Some even founded

Fig. 11 - Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Hunter of Hungry Horse, 1979, etching, aquatint

Fig. 12 - Sam Gilliam, Dogon V, 2005, intaglio, lithograph, 30 x 24.5.

their own print shops as did James Lavadour who established Crow Shadow Institute on the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon. Crow Shadow became one of the important centers of contemporary art on the Northwest Coast. The spread of Reddy’s concept of printmaking as a vehicle for the expression of the artist’s spirit has been echoed by numerous other teacher-artists like me.

In the United States, not only viscosity printing, but printmaking as a medium of personal expression is taught in every printmaking department at art schools and other institutions of higher education. Two of the printmaker/teachers who are often credited as being principal figures in the American printmaking renaissance of the 1960s, Gabor Peterdi and Mauricio Lasansky learned Reddy’s techniques (and his philosophic concepts) at Atelier 17. Peterdi taught first at the Brooklyn Museum’s graphic workshop, then at Hunter College, and for 27 years he headed the printmaking department at the Yale University School of Art. His students like Robert Bero and Daniel Pierce became teachers themselves, passing on the techniques that Peterdi had learned from Reddy. Peterdi’s print, Polite People, 1948, clearly shows the effects that can be achieved with viscosity printing and his etching, Apocalypse, 1952 reveals the kind of linear markmaking associated with Reddy and other artists like Sue Fuller working at Atelier 17.

Contemporary artist Mark Johnson co-taught with Reddy for six years in Reddy’s color print atelier at New York University, and Johnson is still teaching and carrying on Reddy’s tradition at NYU today.

Fig. 13 - Gabor Peterdi, Polite People, etching, aquatint

Fig. 14 - Gabor Peterdi, Apocalypse, 1952, etching, engraving, 25 x 35 inches

Mauricio Lasansky led the printmaking workshop at the University of Iowa, introducing many American artists to Reddy’s ideas including Miriam Schapiro, one of the founders of the Feminist Art Movement and her husband, Paul Brach, the founding dean of the fine arts division at the California Institute of the Arts. Both received their Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, having studied extensively with Lasansky. While the examples here are black and white, so not showing viscosity printing, they do reveal the look of spontaneity that abstract expressionist projects, cementing the aura of authenticity of feeling on the part of the artist. Julie Mehretu projects the same kind of authenticity in her work today as in Among the Multitude, a 2021 lithograph.

Lasansky’s students carried on the tradition of Atelier 17 as shown in a blog posting by Teresa

Fig. 15 - Miriam Schapiro, etching, 1946

Fig. 16 - Paul Brach

Fig. 17 - Julie Mehretu, 2021, lithograph, 28 x 35

Parker, a former student of Robert Wolfe who in turn studied with Lasansky at the Iowa Printmaking Studio, and who like other students of Lasansky passed on the concepts of Krishna Reddy and Hayter’s Atelier 17. A quote from Parker’s blog says it all: “Many of [Wolfe’s] students went on to. . . spread the word about printmaking. Some of these former students include Keith Achepohl, Glen Alps, Lee Chesney, David Driesbach, John Ilhe, John Paul Jones, and Robert Wolfe. The passing of the printmaking torch from generations of teachers to students is what makes the legacy of Atelier 17, Hayter, and Lasansky. students is what makes the legacy of Atelier 17, Hayter, and Lasansky. 51

The first university at which Reddy lectured was American University in Washington, DC. Reddy was invited to teach there by longtime art department faculty member and department chair Robert Franklin Gates after Gates heard Reddy speak at a printmaking symposium in Canada. Kathleen Spagnolo was a graphic designer before studying printmaking at American University where she took a course with Reddy. Spagnolo’s landscape prints, in all of which she used viscosity printing, are in the print collection at the Georgetown University Library. 52

An artist who was strongly influenced by Reddy when he was teaching at New York University is Elaine Bregier who taught etching and viscosity printing techniques at the School for Visual Arts,

51 Teresa Parker, “Mauricio Lasansky, 1914-2012, Beloved Patriarch of American Printmaking,” That’s Inked Up, Tuesday, October 9, 2012, https://thatsinkedup.blogspot.com/2012/10/mauriciolasansky-1914-2012- beloved.html.

52 “Undiscovered Printmakers: Hidden Treasures at Georgetown University Library,” Special Collections Gallery, January 11–April 10, 2016; https://library.georgetown.edu/exhibition/undiscoveredprintmakers- hidden-treasures-georgetown-universitylibrary.

New York. Bregier’s prints are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. On the SVA website, she is quoted as saying: “I love teaching the etching processfrom basic techniques to the experimental. I see printmaking as a fluid process, and while I work closely with students who want to master the traditional forms, I encourage them to think about materials and surfaces in adventurous ways.” 53

Viscosity printing and Reddy’s other innovations also were spread through the how-to-do-it books on printmaking that were written in the 1960s by Peterdi and others. The most widely used were the publications of artists Clare Romano and John Ross which culminated in The Complete Printmaker and Gabor Peterdi’s Printmaking: Old and New. These books became the bibles of printmaking classes, thus spreading Reddy’s viscosity techniques to individual artists as well as those studying in formal classes. 54

I want to conclude with Krisha Reddy’s own words which perfectly express the vision that informed his artistic life’s journey.

“The same way as the sound transforms into light waves through a medium, the visual form if expressed spontaneously in any medium like in words, music, colour, stone, metal, etc., a

53 Elaine Bregier, “Etching Faculty, Artist and Printmaker,” https://printmaking.sva.edu/elaine-breiger. She was born in 1933 and probably now retired.

54 John Ross, Claire Romano, Tim Ross, The Complete Printmaker, kindle edition, https://www.amazon.com/Books-Clare-Romano-RossJohn/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AClare%2BRomano %2BRoss%2B%2526%2BJohn%2BRoss; Gabor Peterdi, Printmaking: Methods Old and New, https://www.amazon.com/Printmaking-Methods-OldGabor- Peterdi/dp/0025960601.

completely new form result. . . Great forces are churning this earth, creating this cream of vast unknown forms of nature, and we are left to wonder and if possible calculate this with our own limited mind. When one stopped measuring we see man like a flute in Nature's hands and we experience a bit of that vast unknown. Ah! To be that flute!” 55

55 Sumesh Sharma, “Krishna Reddy and Atelier 17: A ‘New Form’ Takes Shape,” October 18, 2016, Perspectives,

https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/workshopand-legacy-krishna-reddy-a -new-form.

CATALOG RAISONNE – VISCOSITY INTAGLIO PRINTS

The Journey Through Krishna Reddy’s Prints

Umesh Gaur

In a world where artistic greatness is often measured by the magnitude of one’s output, Krishna Reddy’s oeuvre stands as a compelling counterexample. Over the course of a career that spanned more than seven decades, Reddy produced only fifty-four plates from 1952 to 1997 to make viscosity intaglio prints for which he is most recognized 56. In stark contrast, Pablo Picasso, one of Reddy’s great influences, created over 2,400 prints. At the same time, M. F. Husain, one of India’s most prolific modern artists, is estimated to have produced more than 40,000 works of art. Why, then, did Reddy’s printmaking remain so deliberately circumscribed in number?

The answer lies in Reddy’s deeply philosophical and experimental approach to printmaking a method that valued process over productivity, discovery over display, and depth over dissemination. For him, printmaking was not merely a means of reproduction or stylistic repetition, but a form of inquiry and meditation on material, form, and perception.

Reddy’s methods were labor-intensive and often sculptural. Drawing on his background in sculpture and his long association with Atelier 17 in Paris, he treated the plate as a dynamic surface, subject to years of etching, burnishing, carving, and polishing. He frequently returned to the same plate, experimenting with color, altering tonal fields, and refining how ink responded to the plate’s intricate textures.

Unlike most printmakers, who work toward a consistent edition, Reddy used a single plate to create a series of visually and emotionally distinct impressions. Each variation stood as a unique work. For him, the plate was not a tool for replication but a site of experimentation.

His close connection with Stanley William Hayter, founder of Atelier 17, further shaped this philosophy. Though Hayter is considered one of the twentieth century’s great printmakers, he too produced a relatively modest number of plates around 350 over six decades. Like Reddy, he saw the plate as a space for invention and transformation, a laboratory where science, alchemy, and art converged 57 [2] Where Picasso’s and Husain’s prolific output emphasized invention through abundance, Reddy and Hayter sought complexity through iteration, pushing single ideas to their structural and expressive limits.

This Catalogue Raisonné presents a comprehensive visual and documentary record of Krishna Reddy’s viscosity intaglio prints, encompassing all fifty-four plates he created during his lifetime. For plates in

56 During the 1940s, Krishna Reddy explored a range of printmaking techniques, including woodcut, engraving, etching, and lithography. Although his primary focus from 1952 to 1997 was viscosity intaglio printmaking, he occasionally experimented with other printmaking methods throughout his career. This Catalog Raisonné is limited to Reddy’s viscosity intaglio production.

57 Hayter was trained as a chemist, and Reddy studied Botany and Biology at Shantiniketan.

which Reddy did not introduce significant variations, a single image has been included to represent the artist’s intended vision. However, in many instances, Reddy produced dramatically different impressions from the same plate. These are documented with multiple images, most notably in the case of The Great Clown, widely regarded as his magnum opus, where a kaleidoscopic selection of impressions reveals the full expressive potential of his method.

While Reddy’s variations may resemble traditional printmaking “states,” the term is not accurate in his case. In standard practice, a state involves deliberate, permanent changes to the plate, often tracked in sequence. Reddy rarely altered his plates this way or documented such changes systematically. His variations stemmed primarily from changes in inking, wiping, and process. Even when he modified the plate, his approach was intuitive and non-linear. Each impression was treated as a complete work, not a step toward a final image. Calling them “states” imposes a conventional structure that doesn’t reflect the open-ended nature of his practice.

Over the course of his career, Reddy is estimated to have produced more than 10,000 individual prints. This Catalogue Raisonné represents a significant effort to document that extensive body of work. It draws upon inscriptions from nearly 1,500 impressions and high-resolution images sourced from the Reddy estate, private collections, galleries, auction houses, and museum holdings. It provides the most comprehensive edition data available for all fifty-four plates, including print titles, production dates, edition sizes, and publishers.

Krishna Reddy mostly used copper plates for his viscosity prints. Copper gave him the precision and durability he needed for fine lines and layered inking. Zinc was used less often mainly for tests, early works, or when he didn’t expect to rework the plate much. Zinc is cheaper and easier to etch, but wears down faster. At Atelier 17, both materials were used, and sometimes an artist would start on zinc and switch to copper once the composition was finalized. That might have been the case with some of Reddy’s prints.

Some of his plates were destroyed after printing The Great Clown, for example, was canceled by the publisher to preserve the edition’s integrity. Atelier 17 also had a practice of defacing plates after editions. Reddy himself may have destroyed or overworked some plates, especially if he felt they no longer matched his evolving ideas. For him, destroying a plate wasn’t failure it was part of the process.

We don’t have a complete list of what material was used for each plate, but when known, that information is included in this Catalogue Raisonné.

Krishna Reddy was meticulous about his materials, and that extended to the paper he chose. While we don’t have a complete record of the papers he used for each print, he favored high-quality European rag papers, such as Arches or BFK Rives, which could absorb the layered inking of viscosity techniques without warping. These are the same durable, lightly textured papers used by many artists at Atelier 17. For some prints, he tried Japanese papers or handmade sheets, but the majority of his editioned prints were probably done on heavyweight Western papers with good archival qualities.

Reddy printed the majority of his impressions himself, with only a small number of plates editioned in collaboration with publishers. He rarely dated his prints and frequently revised or changed their titles. As a result, his documentation varied considerably and did not always follow conventional printmaking standards. Reddy typically labeled certain prints as “Impressions by the Artist” or “Artist’s Proofs,” while

a smaller number were marked “Hors d’Commerce (HC).” However, there is a likely overlap among these categories. Some impressions, for example, are inscribed as Hors d’Commerce (Artist’s Proofs), suggesting they may have originally belonged to the Artist’s Proofs edition before being re-designated.

Reddy’s practice of revising titles adds further complexity. In some cases, different editions appear to have been issued under variant titles. When these alternate titles are undated, it seems reasonable to assume they were produced around the same time. In certain instances such as Three Graces (1953), which was re-editioned several years later under the French title Les Trois Grâces (1958) Reddy assigned specific dates to distinguish them. However, in many other cases, the relationship between impressions remains ambiguous. For example, Butterfly Formation (1957) was formally editioned under that title. Yet, other impressions from what appears to be the same plate exist with alternate titles Le Papillon, Two Fishes, and Deux Formes en Une. These variations are undated and uneditioned, leaving it uncertain whether they represent distinct editions or simply alternative titles assigned to prints from the same edition.

The edition data presented in this Catalogue Raisonné reflects the best available estimates, based on extensive examination of impressions. In instances where inscriptions or documentation do not allow for a reliable estimate of edition size, that information has been omitted. While not definitive, the data assembled here provides a meaningful and much-needed overview of Reddy’s viscosity intaglio output and serves as a vital foundation for understanding the scale, nuance, and innovation of his contributions to modern printmaking.

Over the past two decades, I have had the privilege of assembling a complete collection of Krishna Reddy’s viscosity intaglio prints. With only fifty-four plates created over his lifetime, Reddy’s printmaking output is remarkably modest. I was fortunate not only to acquire at least one print from each plate but also to gather color variations and trial proofs, each print revealing a distinct facet of Reddy’s evolving artistic vision.

This offers a unique opportunity: to view, study, and preserve the entirety of Reddy’s printmaking legacy as a unified whole. In 2023, we presented the full collection at our private gallery. For this exhibition, the works were installed chronologically, allowing visitors and visiting scholars to trace the unfolding of Reddy’s visual language across five decades. Seen together, the collection becomes more than a body of prints it becomes a visual diary, charting an artist’s sustained dialogue with matter, form, and time.

What follows is a journey through the evolution of Krishna Reddy’s imagery how it unfolded, shifted, and deepened over time. While this essay reflects my perspective as a collector, it is also informed by the insights of other scholars 58, printmakers 59, and conservators 60, and most importantly, by Reddy’s own reflections on his work 61 .

58 Bronx catalog, Sengupta, Karode, and Burney as cited in the narrative of this Catalog Raisonné.

59 Private conversations with Mark Johnson and Judith Brodsky.

60 Discussions with Christina Taylor based upon her microscopic examination of several Reddy’s prints. This research is presented in Chapter XX of this volume.

61 All Reddy’s quotes throughout the narrative of this Catalog Raisonné, presented in quotation marks, have been extracted from Bronx Catalog

FISH, 1952

Edition of 120

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Editions of 5, 10 and 15

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

FORM IN SPACE, 1956

Artist’s Proofs

Plate: 9 ¼” x 13 5/8”

Fish (1952) is one of Krishna Reddy’s earliest color etchings from the beginning of his color printmaking career. In this print, Reddy explores the nature of life, inspired by how a single cell can grow into a complex organism. He expressed his fascination with how “a bundle of living cells come together, shape themselves into many forms like bones, muscles and fins to navigate and live in the abundance of water.” For Reddy, the fish is not just a separate being, but something formed by and connected to the energy and movement of the water around it.

To create this image, Reddy used etching, carving tools, and some of his first experiments with viscosity printing. He built the form through overlapping lines and soft, fading shapes. These lines seem full of energy and help dissolve the boundary between the fish and its environment.

Reddy, who studied biology at Santiniketan in India, was also influenced by Gordon Barrow’s book The Structure of Molecules. In it, Barrow writes that a scientist must “fit himself into the molecular state of things to be effective.” In a similar spirit, Fish is not just a picture of a living species, it is a meditation on how energy and form are deeply connected, a theme that remained central to Reddy’s work throughout his life.

INSECT, 1952

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 10 and 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

SPACE CREATES FORM, 1952

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 25

INSECT, 1955

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Plate: 12” x 15 ¾” (copper)

In Insect, Krishna Reddy continued exploring the patterns and structures found in nature. This print is not just a picture of an insect, but a reflection on how forms grow and take shape. "I was preoccupied by the forms and shapes of nature and getting a deeper insight into their formations," Reddy said. "One creates form to communicate one’s insights into nature."

Instead of drawing the insect directly, Reddy used tools like burins and gouges to carve deep and shallow lines into the plate. Through this process, the insect slowly appeared from the network of lines, as if it was growing out of the surface itself. The final image feels sculpted rather than drawn an insect that does not simply sit on the surface but seems to emerge from within.

TUATARA FORMING, 1953

Edition of 50

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

ASTERIX, 1955

Impressions by the artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs

BULGING TUATARA

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proof) – Edition of 5

UNTITLED, 1956

Artist’s Proof – Edition of 10

Plate: 15 ¼” x 11 ½”

In Tuatara Forming, Krishna Reddy shifted his attention outward from the detailed patterns of nature to the larger rhythms of the universe. “I plunged into the study of organic shapes,” he later said. “I was very involved in astronomy wondering about how the universe evolved with all the galaxies, stars, planets, and our own world, so full of life.” This early print marked an important moment in his thinking, moving beyond studies of human anatomy and earthly forms toward a deeper reflection on the forces that shape all living matter.

The tuatara, a reptile from New Zealand often described as a “living fossil,” became a powerful symbol for Reddy. For him, it represented continuity across time, something ancient and elemental, created from the same cosmic materials as stars.

THREE GRACES, 1953

Edition of 80

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 10 and 15

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

LES TROIS GRACES, 1958

Edition of 30

Artist’s Proofs

Plate: 9 ½” x 19 3/8”

In Three Graces, Krishna Reddy moved from directly observing nature to creating a more abstract design. Instead of telling a story, the power of this print comes from the use of line, rhythm, and movement. Reddy said, “I learned the way different tools move on the metal plate. I worked a lot with the burin and gouge and became aware of the energy of the lines. I made spirals that opened up and formed three graceful shapes.”

This early print does not show the mythological “Three Graces” in a realistic way. Instead, Reddy used flowing spirals and curves to suggest their spirit through motion. The shapes merge and separate in a smooth, elegant rhythm.

Three Graces was also an important experiment for Reddy as he explored how different tools create different effects. The burin and gouge left marks that gave the surface a textured, almost sculptural feel. This way of working, using the plate to both draw and carve, became an important part of his later prints.

TWO FORMS IN ONE, 1954 & 1957

Edition of 220

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

BULL AND MAN, 1954

Plate: 15 ¼” x 12”

Publisher: International Graphic Arts Society (IGAS)

Unlike his earlier prints, which still showed hints of nature, Two Forms in One came entirely from his imagination and sense of structure. In Two Forms in One, Krishna Reddy explored combining natural forms with strong, structured design. Inspired by his travels to Turkey, where he admired the powerful symbols on ancient mosques and royal seals, Reddy wanted to create a print where two shapes fit together into a single, unified design.

Reddy worked deeply into the plate using burins, gouges, and acid biting, treating it almost like a sculptor shaping stone. He repaired flaws, used rollers with different hardness, and carefully controlled inks of various thicknesses to layer colors on one plate.

62

62 Krishna Reddy, New Ways of Colour Printmaking: Significance of Materials & Processes (New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery and Ajanta Offset, 1998), 22.

JELLYFISH, 1955

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Editions of 5 and 10

Plate: 17” x 13”

At first glance, Jellyfish seems to be a serene portrayal of marine life. However, as is often the case with Krishna Reddy's works, the image surpasses its title. In Jellyfish, the overall impression is a mesmerizing glimpse into the vastness of space and the starry universe. Reddy's artistry elevates a humble sea creature into a profound cosmic metaphor, a transformation that is both intriguing and inspiring.

As Wechsler articulates in this volume, Krishna Reddy presented a unique perspective on the midtwentieth-century fascination with reimagining space. In his quest, Reddy delved into the natural world, infusing the visual essence of organic life with a universal sense, a creative approach that we can all appreciate. Reddy once said, "The launch of Sputnik sparked a sensation in me, leading to the creation of liquid space with the emerging shape of a water form." This fusion of a scientific event and artistic imagination is a fascinating example of how Reddy internalized the world around him, not to replicate it, but to reimagine its energies in a visual form that we can all find intriguing.

Philosophically, Jelly Fish also reflects Reddy's core belief in the act of seeing. As he once wrote: "Art should grow out of the beautiful world in which we live… The great artist is not a great stylist, but a great thinker, a person who can wonder." This print, to me, is Reddy at his most philosophical. It doesn't explain. It invites us to wonder.

MATERNITY, 1955 & 1958

Edition of 30

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 17 7/8” x 13”

In Maternity, Krishna Reddy continued to explore how forms can grow from movement and energy. He later said about the work, “Through the radiating structural arrangements, I watched the evolution of a shape.”

Instead of showing maternity as a direct image of a mother or child, Reddy expressed the idea of life creation itself. His swirling, etched lines suggest both cosmic and natural processes, like galaxies forming or cells dividing to create new life. The image feels alive and full of motion. Through careful carving and layering of textures, Reddy created a scene that feels both personal and vast at the same time. Maternity shows one of his key artistic ideas: that form does not come from outside, but grows naturally from within, shaped by invisible forces. 63

63 Prints and Processes at Atelier 17 (New York: New York Public Library, 2016), 15–16.

BUTTERFLY FORMATION, 1957

Edition of 110

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

LE PAPILLON

TWO FISHES

DUEX FORMES UN UNE

Plate: 17 ½” x 13 ½”

In Butterfly Formation, Krishna Reddy described his process this way: “Movements entering and leaving space resulted in the image of a butterfly. Even though I used burins, gouges, and acid, the plate developed a full relief and opened up new possibilities. It was no longer just a flat surface to draw and print on. I could now feel the different levels and depths of the metal like a sculpture. This needed a completely new way of thinking about printmaking.”

Butterfly Formation is an important work in Reddy’s career. The print captures the delicate structure and beauty of a butterfly, preserving its graceful form in a lasting image. Reddy saw this print as the peak of his early studies of nature’s hidden designs, which began with Fish (1952).

The upward motion and biomorphic structure of the butterfly image later inspired Reddy’s sculpture Aspiration, a monumental marble piece carved in Montreal. In this instance, the print preceded the sculpture unusual, since artists usually create prints after sculpting.

PASTORALE, 1958, 1959

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 10 and 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist)

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 14 ¼” x 18 7/8”

Travel often inspired Krishna Reddy to create prints based on nature. But Pastorale, one of his most powerful landscapes, was not based on a real place. Instead, it was inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphony of the same name. 64 “I was inspired by Beethoven’s Pastorale to work this plate,” Reddy said. “The power of the music exploded into space filled with shapes. As I carved with scrapers and burins, strange forms appeared. The more I worked, the more alive the landscape became.”

Although the print is abstract, it feels like a wide, flowing landscape full of energy. Reddy’s detailed and layered lines reflect the rhythm and movement of Beethoven’s music. Instead of showing a real scene, he created a landscape that feels alive and full of motion. Pastorale expresses Reddy’s belief that nature’s energy can be shown through the balance of movement, structure, and space. In this work, the land seems to live and breathe, shaped by the same forces that move the universe. 65

64 Burney

65 Prints and Processes at Atelier 17 (New York: New York Public Library, 2016), 16.

WATER LILIES, 1959

Edition of 150

Artist’s Proofs – Editions of 5 and 10

Plate: 13 1/4” x 18 ¼” (zinc)

In Water Lilies, Krishna Reddy combined personal memory with new artistic ideas. The water lily was special to him, reminding him of his childhood village pond filled with lotus flowers and lilies. “Water lilies so beautiful and full of life,” he said. “This subject pushed me to find a new way to work on the plate and print in color.”

Instead of simply showing what the flowers looked like, Reddy tried to capture their energy and spirit. He created lines that moved in and out, weaving together to make lively, bubbling shapes. 66

Water Lilies was also a big step forward in Reddy’s technique. This print marked his discovery of the contact process 67, which allowed him to use inks of different thicknesses to layer colors at the same time. This created soft, glowing textures that were not possible with traditional methods. The contact process became a key part of his viscosity printing style and opened up new creative possibilities.

66 Karoode

67 More details of this process are discussed in Taylor’s essay in this volume.

RIVER, 1960, 1959

Edition of 120

Artist’s Proofs – Editions of 10 and 30

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 1/4” x 18 ¼”

River is one of Krishna Reddy’s most vibrant and textured landscape prints. It was inspired by the streams he visited during a summer stay at Stanley William Hayter’s country home, Alba-la-Roche, in the South of France. “Every day I visited a little stream flowing through the rocky hills,” Reddy said. “I watched the life in the flowing water, full of fish and other creatures.”

Unlike traditional landscapes, River combines memory, movement, and feeling. On the left, black and red tree-like textures twist and shift into deep blues. On the right, the curving shoreline shows the stream’s gentle flow. Reddy carefully blended subject and design, using carving and texture on the plate to create raised surfaces that feel almost sculptural when printed. 68

The mix of texture and color brings the river to life. Similar to his earlier Water Lilies, the patterns in River seem to bubble and shimmer, changing with the viewer’s gaze and capturing the energy of moving water. 69

68 Bronx essay

69 Karoode

SUNSET, 1961

Edition of 60

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Plate: 17 ¼” x 13 5/8”

In Sunset, Krishna Reddy captured a powerful and fleeting moment he experienced on the beaches of Portorož, Yugoslavia. “I was moved by the magnificence of the setting sun and the sky with glowing reflections in the waters,” he said.

Unlike many of his earlier works that turn nature into abstract, swirling forms, Sunset is one of Reddy’s more realistic prints. It pays tribute to the raw beauty of nature. 70

In this print, he shows the vast sea and sky in a way that feels both grand and peaceful. The horizon fades into glowing colors, while the water reflects the light with soft, shimmering textures. Reddy created a surface where colors blend gently, capturing the quiet and magical glow of twilight.

70 Burney

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Krishna Reddy’s printmaking changed in important ways, shaped by his background as a sculptor. He began to treat the printing plate like a sculptural surface. As Reddy worked closely with the materials, he discovered new techniques. Delicate scraping and carving created soft, shallow marks, while deeper acid bites produced sharper, harder shapes. The plate was no longer shaped only by acid and press pressure it became a lively, multi-dimensional space shaped directly by his hands.

The idea of penetration became key to his process. By mixing hand carving, engraving, and acid biting with rollers of different hardness, Reddy was able to create layers of colors and lines that seemed to move in and out of the surface. This gave his prints depth and made them feel alive with movement.

Treating the plate like a sculptor gave Reddy more freedom. He could make ongoing changes, just like a painter working on canvas. His process became more expressive and spontaneous, blending drawing, sculpture, and printmaking into one.

SEED

PUSHING, 1961

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

GERMINATION I,

1961

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Plate: 14 /4” x 19”

In Seed Pushing, Krishna Reddy captures one of nature’s most mysterious processes: the birth of life from a single seed. Describing his approach, Reddy explained, “I tried to feel the seed in a growing formation making its way through the surrounding earth, the seed opens and radiates into patterns, a feeling of the interior spiraling outwards and penetrating the exterior.” To express this unseen force, Reddy experimented with deep acid-biting to highlight radiating structures, carved strong divisions into the plate, and used a serrated drill to create small, bright white hollows.

Reddy presents the seed’s growth as a whirlpool of swirling lines and energy, using earthy, natural colors that feel deeply connected to the life of the soil. Instead of showing a seed literally, he chose to express its inner energy through abstract forms. 71

Following his interest in science and nature, Reddy imagined the emergence of life as something vast and powerful, similar to an astronomical event. At first glance, the spirals and bursts of movement in the print could almost be seen as planets colliding or the Big Bang itself. In Seed Pushing, the tiny act of a seed breaking through the earth becomes a symbol for the great, universal forces of creation and transformation. 72

FLOWER, 1961

Edition of 65

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20 (including some Hors d'Commerce)

FLEURES, 1961

Impressions by the Artist

FLOWER RADIATING, 1961

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

RADIATING FLOWER, 1961

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Plate: 15 5/8” x 18 ¾” (zinc)

Flower encapsulates Reddy's unique approach to form and technique. His distinctive layering of color and his sculptural method of working the plate give each surface a sense of careful shaping, almost as if they were hand-modeled.

Reflecting on this print, Reddy said, “I attempted wandering inside the flower world and to feel the intricate structures of the flower turned inside out. It was amazing to discover the strange forms and the many polarized corners of the shapes. This time I did not use the acid. Using hand tools, several gouges and burins, I worked through the whole zinc plate there was a feeling of molding and structuring a flower.”

What makes Flower so captivating is Reddy's ability to draw us into the inner world of a flower. He doesn’t just show us what a flower looks like; he invites us to feel its inner architecture. This print is not just a philosophical depiction, but a journey of discovery, and that sense of exploration permeates the entire work.

TREE TRUNK, 1962-1963

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 14 ½” x 18 ½”

In Tree Trunk, Krishna Reddy deepened his focus on the physical qualities of the plate, exploring texture and surface in new ways. “I felt very close to the tree trunk and tried feeling all the surfaces including the bark of the tree,” Reddy recalled. “This was the first time I felt easy working with machine tools. I could feel the deep textures, passing my hand on the plate.” Using grinders, he treated the metal like a sculpture, shaping it with movement and pressure.

The final print feels rich and textured, with ridges, grooves, and rough surfaces that remind one of old bark shaped by nature over time. The machine tools allowed Reddy to carve deeper into the plate, creating more dramatic variations in depth and surface

Following the creation of River (1959), Krishna Reddy became increasingly captivated by the elemental forces of water not just as a subject, but as a dynamic field of energy and movement. Between 1961 and 1963, he produced three prints, Whirlpool (1962), Splash (1962–1963), and Wave (1963), that explore the visual and emotional intensity of water in motion.

In these works, Reddy moved beyond depicting natural forms and instead sought to embody physical phenomena. Each of these prints visualizes water not as a static scene but as an immersive experience: the spiraling forces of a whirlpool, the sudden eruption of a splash, the rhythmic power of a wave. Together, they mark a significant phase in Reddy’s development as he moved toward capturing pure movement and energy as subject in itself.

WHIRLPOOL, 1962-1963

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 10

Plate: 14 ½” x 18 3/16”

In Whirlpool, Krishna Reddy explores the raw, destabilizing force of a vortex. “During this period, I tried to feel things in full movement. This time it was the whirlpool,” he recalled. “Working with gouges, burins, scrapers, and machine tools, I plowed through the plate, creating spiraling liquid formations.” The resulting composition draws the viewer into a visual descent, its spiraling shapes pulling inward toward unknown depths.

Whirlpool is a study in contrasts, terror and beauty, movement and stillness. The tactile surface textures enhance the visceral experience of nature directly 73. Energy radiates from within, as swirling forces animate the surface with an intense, almost hypnotic vitality 74

SPLASH, 1962-1963

Edition of 65

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 10

Plate: 14 ½” x 18 1/8” (zinc)

In Splash, Krishna Reddy captured the fleeting moment when an object breaks the surface of still water, sending ripples outward in concentric waves. “I visualized ‘The Splash’ after throwing a stone into water,” he wrote. “By contact process and using graded intensities of several harmonious colors, the contacted colors heighten the liquid movement.”

Unlike the deep spirals of Whirlpool, Splash is an explosion frozen in time, water scattering and expanding outward. The layering of subtle tonalities allow for a shimmering, dynamic surface where the movement seems to pulse off the paper. Reddy’s deft control of material and method results in a work where energy seems to illuminate from within, embodying the intensity and fragility of the moment 75 .

WAVE, 1963

Edition of 65

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

LA VAGUE, 1963

Plate: 14 5/8” x 18 11/16”

Publisher: Guilde de la Gravure, Paris

Wave (1963) shows Krishna Reddy’s deep interest in the energy and movement of water, this time focusing on the rolling rhythm of ocean waves. “I could feel the momentum and the power of the waves,” Reddy said. To capture this feeling, he changed how he worked on the plate. “I developed a way of making fine relief lines using a special paint and a wax paper funnel. The paint flowed in continuous strings without breaking.”

The design of Wave might remind viewers of Hokusai’s Great Wave, but Reddy used multi-colored viscosity printing to create a different effect. By adjusting the viscosity of each ink color, he made the printed surface look layered and liquid, giving it the feel of moving water. 76

The force of the wave is shown through flowing, tight lines that build and release tension across the composition. The fine relief lines keep the image sharp and clear, while the printing technique makes the movement come alive. Like his earlier prints Whirlpool and Splash, Wave is full of energy, but here, Reddy added a steady, rhythmic pulse that reflects the endless flow of the sea. 77

76 Rebecca Brown

77 Karoode

FLIGHT, 1963

Edition of 65

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 15

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 10

Plate: 13 ¼” x 19 ¼”

In Flight (1963), Krishna Reddy sought to capture the exhilaration and force of an object soaring through space. “I tried to realize the maximum impact of an object flying and to build that experience in a plate,” Reddy explained. “This required finding new ways and new materials. A series of deep-bitten structures were made on the plate and printed in contact process by juxtaposition of streaks of colors.”

Bold sweeping lines curve through the lighter top section and come together at the far right, creating a powerful, almost explosive effect. Lines radiating in the opposite direction add even more energy, making the whole image feel like it’s flying across the surface.

GERMINATION, 1964

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist)

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 10

Plate: 12” x 17 ½” (zinc)

In Germination, Krishna Reddy created powerful images of time, energy, and growth. Talking about the work, Reddy said, “I tried imagining a 100-year-old tree caught in time and space. I separated that portion of time and tried to reduce it first into hours, then into minutes, seconds, and so on, until it became just a single moment. Like a time-lapse photography, you can watch the speed of a growing tree and the explosion of energy when time is compressed into one instant.”

Instead of showing a tree in a realistic way, Germination captures the hidden forces of nature. Reddy made a composition where movement spreads outward from a central point. His intricate lines and textured surfaces suggest both tiny life forms growing at the cellular level and the huge, unstoppable force of growth over many years.

SPIDERWEB, 1964

Edition of 65

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 10

Plate: 17 9/16” × 12 1/16”

In Spiderweb (1964), Krishna Reddy explored its beauty and complexity. Describing his process, he said, “The web and the spider amidst plants and animals. I needed a way to draw freely and continuously, so I used a felt-tip pen with Flomasler ink, which resisted acid. I also melted rosin on the plate and used serrated machine tools to carve the web deeply, while keeping the threads delicate.”

Instead of just showing a spiderweb, Reddy turned it into a powerful, wide-reaching form. The fine threads stand out clearly against the empty space around them, giving the image energy and a feeling of tension. Reddy often looked to nature for ideas, to things like beehives and spiderwebs, small but incredibly complex structures that he saw as both beautiful and deeply meaningful.

BLOSSOM, 1965

Edition of 50

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs

BLOSSOMING, 1965

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 17 ¼” x 13 ½”

Blossom (1965) marks an important change in Krishna Reddy’s way of working. For the first time, he carved the entire plate using only machine tools. By using serrated steel and stone grinders, he could shape the plate more quickly and with greater freedom. This gave the metal surface a lively, sculptural feel. By using mechanical tools creatively, Reddy started to push the limits of intaglio printmaking.

In this work, Reddy wanted to show the invisible forces of growth in nature. “I was trying to build the formations of the forces of energy that blossoms into a shape,” he said. “It was like a vibrating cellular structure trying to grow.”

PLANTS, 1965-1966

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 5/8” x 17 1/8”

Plants is another one of Krishna Reddy’s early works where he used only machine tools to shape the whole design, not just for texture. Talking about his process, Reddy said, “I drew freely with a pen lines flowing toward the center, spiraling and spreading out. A special shape appeared, and I followed it using serrated metal bits. I also carved round pits into the center, which printed as soft, white areas creating depth.”

The final print feels strong yet natural. A bold shape in the center holds everything together, while soft curves and vertical lines move outward, giving a quiet sense of motion. The carved pits show up as glowing white spots, adding light and space to the image. Reddy also layered soft greys and half-tones to give the image an organic, living quality.

WATER FORM, 1966, 1968

Edition of 50

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) – Two edition of 5

Plate: 17 ¼” x 13 ¾” (zinc)

Krishna Reddy’s Water Form shows his desire to move beyond traditional pictures and create a visual language to express feelings, energy, and change. “I tried to create a liquid environment pliable and flowing, and ultimately an organic shape,” Reddy said. He did not want to show water directly but to capture the experience of being surrounded by its flowing and shifting nature.

Reddy began the process by carving the plate deeply with machine tools, which created strong textures and raised patterns. He added a fine aquatint over the plate and polished some areas with mechanical abrasives to make bright and deep spaces.

RADIATING FLOWERS, 1967

Edition of 95

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10 Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist)

FLEURS ECLANTANTES, 1964

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 6+

FLOWERS, 1967

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 6+

Plate: 12 ¼” x 18 7/16”

Publisher: Antares Editions d ‘Art, France

Radiating Flowers came from Krishna Reddy’s technical experiments while making Water Form (1966). In this print, he pushed his ideas about carved lines and tones even further. “The experience I gained from working the plate Water Form led me to develop a subject that would fully express the process,” Reddy said. He used gouges and scrapers to carve deep lines into the plate and added aquatints with different depths and textures. When he scraped back parts of the aquatints, he was surprised by how much depth and dimension the plate showed.

Reddy used layered and vibrating colors to add more prismatic energy to the image. Instead of showing a flower in a realistic way, he captured the feeling of radiance. Through form and color, he expressed vitality, movement, and the idea of something glowing with life. 78

78 Burney

In the late 1960s, Krishna Reddy experienced a major shift in his artistic direction, moving from abstract images inspired by nature to a focus on the human figure. This change was influenced by his return to sculpture and by the political and social events of the time, especially the student protests in Paris at that time. These events deeply affected Reddy and led him to create sculptures works such as Demonstrators (1968), which show groups of figures standing together, symbolizing unity and strength.

This interest in the human form soon carried over into his printmaking. He began to introduce more figurative elements into his prints, marking an important change in his artistic approach. His use of new tools, such as the vibro tool and machine grinders made it possible for him to carve detailed human forms directly into the printing plate. In doing so, Reddy brought together his sculptural and printmaking practices, using both to express a growing concern with human relationships, collective experience, and social change.

THREE FIGURES, 1967

Edition of 75

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Editions of 10 and 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 13 5/8” x 17 3/8” (zinc)

For Three Figures, Reddy used carving chisels to shape the image directly onto the plate, drawing on his earlier experience with marble. He later recalled, “During this period, culling and carving marble slowly entered into my plate making. For the first time, in this plate, I almost sculpted the images with carving chisels.” This approach marked a major shift in his method of plate preparation and color printing.

Reddy also explored how texture could be preserved in the raised areas of the plate. He used only two rollers omitting the soft roller so ink reached the shallower areas while deeper recesses remained ivory-white. This created striking contrasts and gave the figures a sculptural, three-dimensional quality.

At the same time, Reddy began using machine tools with interchangeable bits, which helped him carve more efficiently and produce a wider range of surface textures. These tools could mimic etching and aquatint effects and offered greater creative freedom. Three Figures was one of the first prints to use this innovative approach.

The work not only introduced new technical methods but also opened a new phase in Reddy’s art, where figurative imagery was fused with sculptural depth, laying the groundwork for his later explorations of the human form.

DEMONSTRATORS,

1968

Edition of 50

Impressions by the Artist – Two edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 5/8” x 17 3/8” (copper)

Demonstrators is considered one of Krishna Reddy’s most politically engaged works. Created in response to the widespread student protests and worker strikes in Paris that year, the print brings together sculptural and printmaking techniques to express a moment of social urgency. In the image, seven elongated figures stand in the foreground, their posture suggesting solidarity and protest. Reflecting on the work, Reddy recalled, “The upheavals during the revolution in Paris of 1968, the crowds of people marching, gathering, and talking influenced this work.”

At the same time, Reddy also created bronze and sculptures with the same title. Both the print and the sculpture reflect his sense of artistic responsibility and his belief that “ the artist participates in building an image through which he wants to say something.” In Demonstrators, the message is one of unity, resistance, and collective strength.

Technically, Demonstrators marked another major development in Reddy’s process. “This was the first time I completely carved to the very depth of the metal using mechanical and stone grinders, as if I was carving stone in the round,” he noted. Using motorized tools with stone and metal bits, he carved deeply into the copper plate. Because of the depth, ink rollers could not reach certain areas, leaving bright white highlights that enhanced the sense of volume and space.

With Demonstrators, Reddy extended his artistic practice beyond formal exploration to address realworld events, signaling a shift toward greater social engagement in his work.

PRAYING WOMAN, 1970

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 17 3/8” x 13 3/8” (copper)

Krishna Reddy’s Praying Woman is one of his most spiritually resonant and technically refined works. The genesis of Praying Woman lay in Reddy’s careful observation of the human body. As he described, “I made a series of drawings of standing figures working in detail from a particular person, slowly evolving toward a more abstract human figure. I ended up with a vertically drawn line which meant a life force or life rhythm for me.” This vertical line became the conceptual spine of the image an axis around which the human form would slowly gather, not through anatomical description but through the suggestion of spiritual presence.

Reddy approached the copper plate like a sculptor, using motor-driven grinders to carve and polish the surface. “I carved the figure like a sculpture,” he explained. After applying a fine aquatint and carefully polishing the metal, “the figure emerged built of subtle aquatint tones.” Rather than outlining contours, Reddy let the form appear through gentle tonal shifts, giving it a soft, luminous presence.

The true breakthrough in Praying Woman came through Reddy’s experimental use of color. After inking the intaglio areas, he applied surface color with rollers of different densities, carefully adjusted to interact with the plate’s varying textures. “With the intaglio on, I rolled the colors with rollers of different densities,” he wrote. “This time I discovered to my surprise the plate was vibrating and shimmering with tertiary color fields built in points, streaks and broken colors.” This effect, which Reddy called a “pointillist manner,” is not a direct reference to Georges Seurat’s painting technique but a printmaker’s analog to it an optical blending of color achieved through the physical structure of the etched metal.

WOMAN AND HER REFLECTIONS

, 1970

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 13 3/16” x 14 3/16” (copper)

Krishna Reddy’s Woman and Her Reflections (1971) shows how closely connected his sculpture and printmaking had become by the early 1970s. During this period, Reddy was carving tall, slender sculptures marked with long vertical grooves. That same vertical rhythm appears in this print, where the figure seems both grounded and spiritual recalling the forms of Giacometti’s sculptures or African ritual statues. Yet the image remains uniquely Reddy’s born from close observation, philosophical reflection, and a mastery of printmaking techniques.

Reddy often started with many quick drawings of people, made in his notebook while observing life around him. In the studio, he redrew these figures, simplifying them until they became vertical lines what he saw as symbols of inner energy. From there, he reshaped them into fuller human forms that matched the image he carried in his mind. The result in Woman and Her Reflections is a graceful, elongated figure that feels both abstract and deeply human.

This is another example of “pointillist juxtaposition.” By applying different colors with rollers, he created a shimmering effect on the surface soft points and streaks of color that brought freshness and depth to the image.

WOMAN AND HER PARTING SON, 1971

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 3/8” x 17 ½” (zinc)

Woman and Her Parting Son shows Krishna Reddy’s ability to express deep human emotions through abstract forms and innovative printmaking techniques. The print offers a thoughtful meditation on the theme of separation and emotional change.

Reddy described the image as showing two figures that emerge from different types of line structures one figure grows out of a concentric (circular) form, while the other develops from an open, outwardradiating structure. These contrasting forms represent the bond between a mother and her child, and the difficult yet natural moment when the child begins to move away and become independent.

Through this work, Reddy invites the viewer to think about themes of growth, change, and the emotional complexity of letting go. These feelings are expressed not through clear narrative or detailed figures, but through a visual language that is uniquely his own sensitive, abstract, and deeply moving.

MANY AND THE ONE, 1971

Edition of 135

Impressions by the Artist – Editions of 10 and 25

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

BETWEEN MANY AND THE ONE, 1972

Impressions by the Artist – Editions of 10

Plate: 12 7/16” x 19”

Publisher: Antares Editions d ‘Art, France

Krishna Reddy’s Many and the One explores the complex relationship between the individual and the group. He said, “I tried reflecting the psychological weight of a mass of people toward an individual person ”

The background is soft and shimmering, made up of the three primary colors, and created using pointillist and broken color techniques. The figures were carefully carved into the plate so that they stand out in relief against the flat, textured background. The glowing quality of the background adds to the emotional impact of the print, highlighting the tension between the power of the group and the position of the individual.

LIFE

MOVEMENT, 1972

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10 Hors d'Commerce prints

LIFE BLOSSOMING, 1972

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 11 ¾” x 19 ¾”

Life Movement is considered one of Krishna Reddy’s most important and technically advanced prints. It shows how he used color, texture, and process to create a powerful image that feels both abstract and deeply human.

To make this print, Reddy layered several aquatints on the plate, using rosin of different sizes and biting the plate multiple times. He then scraped and burnished the surface to create smooth transitions from light to dark. As he explained, this was “to realize various intensities and combinations of colors.” Instead of flat color, the surface breaks into points and streaks.” This gave the image a shimmering, vibrant texture.

The composition begins with a row of vertical lines that slowly turn into organic shapes, ending in a radiant human figure. This gradual transformation reflects Reddy’s interest in growth and change, from structure to life, from order to spirit. He described it as “my most successful print at the time for conveying the power and spontaneity of expression.”

SITTING FIGURE, 1972

Edition of TDB

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Editions of 5 and 10

MEDITATION, 1972

Plate: 17 5/8” x 13 7/8” (copper)

DAWN WORSHIP, 1973, 1974

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 5/8” x 17 3/8”

Krishna Reddy’s Sitting Figure (1972) and Dawn Worship (1973) are deeply contemplative works that explore meditation, inner awareness, and the connection between the self and the cosmos. Though visually different, both prints express spiritual calm through carefully structured compositions and technical innovation.

In Sitting Figure, a quiet, meditative form emerges from a network of spirals divided by a central vertical line. The figure appears both grounded and weightless, surrounded by swirling lines that suggest energy in contrast to its stillness. This tension between motion and calm reflects Reddy’s interest in balancing outer life with inner peace.

Dawn Worship, inspired by Reddy’s childhood memories of morning prayer, features a figure in devotion bathed in radiant light. The rising sun emits energy like sound waves, and vertical lines suggest the figure merging with the sun symbolizing unity with a greater life force.

FALLING FIGURE, 1973

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 ¼” x 17 3/8”

Krishna Reddy’s Falling Figure (1973) presents a powerful image filled with symbolic meaning and emotional intensity. The composition shows a group of carved figures arranged in a shape that resembles a cathedral. At the center is a seated figure pointing toward another figure that appears to be falling. This arrangement suggests a story of judgment, where an individual is set apart from the group. It reflects the tension between personal freedom and the expectations of society. Falling Figure serves as "a condemnation of the individual who seeks to manifest his identity apart from the throng." 79

This work demonstrates Reddy’s skill in combining visual form and philosophical ideas. Through this image, he invites viewers to reflect on deeper questions about identity, belonging, and the human experience within the larger world.

79 Karode

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Krishna Reddy added a new technique to his process: photo halftone. This involved exposing a halftone screen onto ortho film, transferring it to a light-sensitive etching plate, and biting it in nitric acid to create the image. However, he did not abandon traditional methods. Hand and machine tools like scrapers and burnishers continued to play a key role, helping him achieve subtle details and a wide range of effects.

CHILD IN SPACE, 1974

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 12 5/8” x 19 5/8”

CHILD DESCENDING, 1976

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 33

APU DESCENDING, 1976

Plate: 12 5/8” x 19 ¼”

Krishna Reddy’s Child in Space and Child Descending are closely related works that reflect his interest in childhood as a symbol of creativity, curiosity, and spiritual growth. In both prints, a radiant child figure appears within a carefully composed environment, expressing ideas of wonder, movement, and transformation.

In Child in Space, Reddy shows a lone child floating in an open, undefined space. He used burin lines to shape the horizon and carved the child’s face with machine tools and roulettes. The result is a quiet, poetic image that contrasts the finely worked figure with the surrounding emptiness, suggesting a journey into the unknown.

Child Descending presents a very different setting. Here, the child moves through a landscape filled with upright, frozen human forms. Reddy began with a fine photo halftone and worked the tones with scrapers and burnishers, much like a mezzotint. He printed the plate using pointillist and broken color techniques, creating a glowing, textured surface. The child appears to bring light and life into a rigid world.

Although different in mood and style, both prints center on the child as a symbol of renewal and change. Child in Space evokes exploration and solitude, while Child Descending suggests movement and awakening. Together, they show how Reddy used technical innovation and visual metaphor to explore the deeper meanings of childhood and transformation.

APU CRAWLING, 1975

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 7/8” x 18 5/8” (zinc)

APU'S SPACE, 1975

Edition of 50

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 10 and 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

APU IN SPACE, 1975

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

CHILD IN SPACE, 1975

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13” x 18” (zinc)

In Apu Crawling and Apu’s Space, Krishna Reddy drew inspiration from his young daughter Aparna, capturing early childhood as a time of movement, discovery, and creativity. Made in 1975, both prints reflect his personal experience of fatherhood.

In Apu Crawling, Reddy used a collage of photographs and drawings, transferred to a zinc plate and carved in selected areas. He printed the plate twice first in relief colors, then in intaglio to produce a layered, luminous image of multiple crawling figures in a wave-like space. Soft color and ample negative space heighten its dreamlike quality.

Apu’s Space takes a similar approach but places the child within a field of structured perspective lines. Reddy described this as children “trying to hold the perspective lines” a metaphor for orientation within a shaped world. Linear frameworks suggest invisible systems guiding the child’s motion and growth.

Writer Amitav Ghosh described Apu Crawling as “a miracle of simplicity” an image that is both powerful and deeply moving. He sees the work as layered with meaning, including as an allegory of the encounter between modernity and its cultural Others. Ghosh notes that the print brings together the figurative and the abstract in a way that perfectly merges Western and Indian visual traditions. The image of the crawling child, based on the artist’s daughter, recalls a familiar figure seen in countless devotional calendars yet its roots reach far deeper, likely tracing back to early depictions of Balagopal, the infant Krishna. In Apu Crawling, Reddy transforms a personal moment into a timeless symbol that bridges cultures and histories. 80

80 Amitava Ghosh in RS

SUN WORSHIPPERS, 1975

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 15

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

SUN RISES, 1975

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

SUN WORSHIP, 1975

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 15

Plate: 13 3/8” x 17 3/8”

Krishna Reddy’s Sun Worshippers (1975) portrays the act of sun worship an expression of devotion found in many cultures throughout history. He wrote, “The sun rises. Its rays knock on every door. People are in prayer,” suggesting a shared human respect for the sun as a source of life and energy.

To create the soft, cloud-like textures in the print, Reddy used a vibro tool, which added subtle atmospheric effects to the surface of the plate. He also shaped the planes of perspective using speciallymade flat scrapers, carving precise lines that guide the viewer’s eye through the space of the image.

The final composition balances airy, shifting textures with clearly defined structures. The clouds recall the passing light of early morning, while the lines suggest architectural spaces or symbolic paths that lead toward the rising sun. This combination reflects Reddy’s ongoing interest in blending the physical and the spiritual, showing how the seen and unseen coexist in both nature and human experience.

RHYME BROKEN, 1977

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 20 and 25

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

RHYTHM BROKEN, 1977

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist)

BREAK IN RHYME, 1977

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20

Plate: 13 7/8” x 19 7/8”

Krishna Reddy’s Rhyme Broken (1977) depicts a moment of shared energy interrupted by sudden conflict. Inspired by the intensity of a boxing match specifically Muhammad Ali’s fights Reddy described the scene as “a row of figures in full applause: there is a break in the middle of the row, and two figures in clash.” The image captures the sharp shift from unity to confrontation, suggesting how easily harmony can give way to tension.

To create this work, Reddy used a combination of precise tools and complex techniques. He drew the structure of the composition using a metal ruler and dry-point needle, laying out clean, linear forms. The standing figures were built up using a vibro tool, which allowed him to shape soft, cloud-like textures in contrast to the dark, rich surfaces typical of mezzotint. He then used machine grinders to carve the details of the figures, giving them greater depth and clarity.

SEATED FIGURE WITH THE RUNNERS, 1979

Edition of 20

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of

Plate: 7” x 13 ½”

Seated Figure with the Runners (1979) shows Krishna Reddy’s interest in combining stillness and movement, and how the human figure connects to the landscape. Inspired by drawings he made in Asilah, Morocco, this print mixes both figurative and abstract shapes in a gentle, thoughtful way. Reddy explained his process, saying, “I printed this plate with very subtle colors, trying to emphasize its depth. I wanted shell-like linear structures emerging from the silting figure and spreading out into the landscape.” His careful use of color and line gives the work quiet but strong energy. The seated figure feels calm and steady, while soft lines flow outward, suggesting motion, runners, or the passage of time.

Krishna Reddy’s Clown Series, which began in the late 1970s, is one of his most thoughtful explorations of the human condition. This poignant body of work was inspired by a visit to the circus with his young daughter, Apu. Watching the show, Reddy was struck by a troubling scene: dozens of clowns entered the ring at once, each performing separately but at the same time. "There must have been at least a hundred of them," he recalled, "performing their parts simultaneously." What was meant to be amusing instead felt overwhelming. Reddy realized he could not focus on any one clown, and the performers seemed to lose their individuality. To him, they appeared less like artists and more like factory workers or automated toys, stripped of uniqueness and creativity.

This experience became the catalyst for the Clown Series. In these prints, Reddy used the figure of the clown to represent the complexities of modern life. The clowns became symbols of both joy and sadness their painted faces masking deep human emotions. Through them, Reddy reflected on the tension between individuality and conformity, and on how people can become lost in the crowded, fast-paced world of contemporary society.

CLOWN-JONGLEUR, 1978

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

CLOWN JUGGLER, 1978

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 11 3/8” x 9 3/8”

Engraving/lithograph on paper – Edition of 200

"Clown Jongleur" marks the inception of Reddy's Clown Series. In this print, Reddy captures the dynamism and balance inherent in the act. 81 The figure's elongated form and the swirling lines convey a sense of movement, reflecting the artist's interest in the interplay between form, space, and time. This work sets the tone for the series, introducing the clown as a central figure through which Reddy explores themes of performance and identity.

TRAPEZE, 1978

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 25 and 50

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 1/8” x 16 1/8”

Krishna Reddy's Trapeze (1978) is a compelling work that captures the dynamic energy of a circus performance. In this print, Reddy presents an interior view of a circus, with rows of seated spectators applauding the acrobats in action. The use of subtle color variations and intricate line work creates a sense of motion and excitement, reflecting the acrobats' performance and the audience's engagement. The composition's layered textures and rhythmic patterns evoke the spectacle and complexity of the circus environment, while also inviting viewers to contemplate the interplay between performer and observer.

THE CLOWN AND THE FLYING SWANS, 1980

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 13 ¾” x 19 7/16” (copper)

In Clown and the Flying Swans, Krishna Reddy transforms the circus clown into a poetic and cosmic figure. Describing the work, Reddy said, “Here the clown reaches cosmic dimensions. When high above the rows of applauding seated figures, his mouth forms into the horizon to receive the swans, which are flying in “V” formation.”

While the bright colors and airy composition suggest joy and freedom, the print carries a deeper symbolic meaning. Above the seated audience, a lone clown, unlike his fellow performers, is in the midst of transformation. As he prepares to join the swans in flight, he symbolizes the possibility of release from earthly roles and limitations. For Reddy, this represents the creative individual’s potential for spiritual growth and transcendence. 82

CLOWN FORMING, 1981

Edition of 100

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 20 and 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Editions of 5 and 10

Plate: 15 ½’ x 19 ¼”

In Clown Forming, Krishna Reddy explores the origin of the clown figure as a metaphor for the struggle between individuality and conformity. Reflecting on the work, Reddy said, “People are seated in rows and applauding. Out of this tremendous applause I could feel clouds forming slowly and building into a clown. I bit a whole plate with a photo halftone and started working down the images with metal grinders, both for sculptural effects and strong textures.” Through this complex process, he created a surface alive with movement and depth, turning applause into form.

The print also explores important social and spiritual ideas. In the busy circus, where many clowns perform at the same time, their individuality disappears. They become mechanical, doing their jobs without being truly seen or appreciated. But out of this confusing scene, the real clown the true artist and individual slowly begins to appear. For Reddy, Clown Forming is ultimately hopeful. Even in a world full of distractions and limitations, he believed people can still rediscover their creative spirit.

CLOWN FALLING, 1981

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20 Artist’s Proofs – Two edition of 10 each Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 30 Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

FALLEN CLOWN, 1981

Plate: 13 ¾” x 18 ¼ (zinc)

Clown Falling captures one of the most poignant moments in Krishna Reddy’s Clown Series the moment of collapse. Reddy shows the clown descending through a space filled with linear structures, which seem to fall and fracture around him. As Reddy explained, “I worked this plate in acid and carved all the images with machine grinders. I tried working the whole environment with linear structures arising from the falling figure.” The result is a composition that feels fragmented and unsettled, as though the entire scene is breaking apart alongside the figure.

This sense of disintegration is not just visual but also symbolic. Reddy reflects on the struggle to maintain individuality in a modern world shaped by pressures and expectations. Institutions like government, education, and religion often impose rigid roles and routines on people, making it difficult for true creativity and personal identity to flourish. Reddy, through the falling clown, offers a poignant metaphor: much like artists in contemporary society, the clown performs endlessly, but at the risk of losing his authentic self.

83

With this print, Reddy continues the deep inquiry that runs through his Clown Series. Like Clown Forming, which speaks to potential and emergence, Clown Falling speaks to loss and dissolution. Yet both remind us of Reddy’s belief that life and art is shaped by continuous change, where moments of struggle and release coexist.

GREAT CLOWN, 1981

Edition of 75

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 25 Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 25

LE CLOWN CELEBRE, 1981

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 10 and 20

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10 and 25 Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs)

THE GREAT CLOWN, 1981

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 25 Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs)

CLOWN CELEBRE, 1981

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 10

THE GREAT CLOWN, 1981

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 39 ¼” x 29 5/8”

Publisher: Galerie Borjenson

The Great Clown is widely considered Krishna Reddy’s magnum opus and the most significant work in his Clown Series. Created on the largest plate he ever used, it brought together his key ideas about form, perception, and human experience. As Reddy noted, “This is the clown as the great magician… I had to find new ways to design, work and print it.”

At the center of the composition is a clown juggling multiple balls, with his rounded nose acting as the image’s visual anchor. From this point radiates a complex network of lines and shapes, giving the print both structure and motion. The clown performs before a seated audience frozen in applause evoking themes of performance, pressure, and the conflict between creativity and conformity.

Color played a crucial role in Reddy’s exploration of meaning. He created many test impressions, experimenting with ink combinations to alter the emotional tone of the image. In some impressions, vivid colors highlight the nose and balls; in others, they dissolve into the background.

For a 1986 exhibition in Sweden, Reddy presented forty-four unique impressions in a catalog, each offering a different mood and message. Twelve of these impressions have been selected to illustrate the expressive range Reddy achieved from a single plate each a testament to his technical mastery and philosophical depth.

CLOWN WITH PIGEON, 1985

Edition of 75

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Plate: 20” x 14” (copper)

Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia

In Clown with Pigeon, Krishna Reddy shifts from the spectacular and dynamic imagery seen in many of his other clown prints to something more tender and intimate. Here, the clown is not performing or caught in motion. Instead, he holds a small pigeon gently in his hands, creating a quiet and touching moment. Behind him, the faint outlines of a circus audience remind us of the world of noise and performance that still surrounds him. Yet, the focus of the image is on this peaceful interaction between the clown and the bird.

While clowns often serve to entertain and distract, here the clown becomes fully human. Holding the pigeon, a universal symbol of peace and fragility, the clown appears calm, thoughtful, and exposed. The scene suggests a pause from the pressures of performance, capturing a rare moment of self-reflection and stillness.

CLOWN WITH MASK, 1995 84 Edition of TBD Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

CLOWN WITH HIS MASK, 1995 Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 20

CLOWN WITH A MASK, 1995 Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 10 ¼” x 14 3/8”

Clown with Mask explores one of the most personal and philosophical themes in Krishna Reddy’s Clown Series: the idea of identity and the masks people wear. In this print, the clown and his mask are shown as two separate forms, highlighting the distance between one’s true self and the roles performed in public life. Through this separation, Reddy raises important questions who is the real individual beneath the mask, and how much of our daily life is shaped by appearances?

By the mid-1990s, Reddy had already spent nearly two decades working with the clown motif. While earlier prints often showed clowns in action or transformation, Clown with Mask takes a more introspective turn. The work suggests that behind the joy and play of the clown’s performance lies a deeper, hidden self. The mask, traditionally used to create humor and hide vulnerability, now becomes a symbol of distance and disconnect. It asks viewers to consider the difference between who we are and who we appear to be.

Clown with Mask reflects Reddy’s deep interest in human psychology and the universal experience of wearing masks in society whether to fit in, protect oneself, or meet the demands of others.

Sengupta book 1993; PCNY 1982, IGNCA 1995 (on print)

THE CLOWN DISSOLVING, 1994-1997

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 20

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

Plate: 12 ½ x 19 ¼” (zinc)

Printed by Mark Johnson

Clown Dissolving marks the final and perhaps the most emotional stage of Krishna Reddy’s Clown Series

In this print, the clown figure does not stand proudly or perform tricks. Instead, it slowly breaks apart and seems to fade into a field of abstract shapes and colors. The edges of the figure blur, and its once clear form dissolves almost completely. Reddy uses this visual effect to express something deeper about life and identity.

Throughout the series, Reddy used the clown to show the tension between playfulness and sadness, between performance and authenticity. In Clown Dissolving, that conflict reaches its most delicate point. The clown no longer appears as a performer in control of the stage. Instead, he becomes fragile and vulnerable, slowly disappearing from view. This fading reflects Reddy’s view that identity is never fixed. Like the clown in this print, people are constantly changing, shaped by time, emotions, and the world around them.

Using soft color transitions and subtle textures, he creates a tender and poetic image that concludes the Clown Series on a thoughtful and moving note.

SORROW OF THE WORLD, 1990

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Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of 5

SORROW IN LEBENON (THE WORLD), 1990

Plate: 11 ¼” x 9 3/8”

VIOLENCE AND SORROW: PERSIAN GULF, 1991

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

VIOLENCE AND SORROW, 1995 and 1999

Edition of 200

Impressions by the Artist - Edition of 25

Artist’s Proofs - Edition of 15

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 5

Plate: 14” x 19 ¼”

Krishna Reddy’s Sorrow of the World (1990) and Violence and Sorrow (1995) mark his return to socially and politically engaged art. Deeply disturbed by the destruction of the 1990 Gulf War, Reddy used these works to express grief and protest. They reflect his belief that art should respond to the human condition an idea shaped during his early years in India, when he was influenced by the country’s independence movement and progressive ideals.

In Sorrow of the World, Reddy used layered colors and textures to create a dense and somber image. The patterns and subdued tones evoke collective mourning, and the confusion left behind by war. Five years later, Violence and Sorrow pushed this idea further. Jagged forms and darker colors show destruction and deep trauma. A central vertical form suggests strength amid collapse, while broken, fragmented shapes around it reflect the loss of peace and order.

These powerful works also connect to themes earlier in Reddy’s career. During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris, he created Demonstrators, a print and sculpture series that captured the energy and unity of political protest. Decades later, Sorrow of the World and Violence and Sorrow revisit global conflict, but now from a perspective of sorrow and reflection rather than hope and action.

This return to serious social themes is especially moving after his long exploration of more playful ideas in his Clown series of the late 1970s through the 1990s. While the clowns represented human fragility and humor, these later sorrow prints face violence directly, without masks or distractions. Together, they complete a circle in Reddy’s art, moving from joy and poetry back to urgent and compassionate statements about human suffering and the brutal costs of war.

THE WOMAN OF SUNFLOWER, 1997

Edition of TBD

Impressions by the Artist - Editions of 5, 10 and 25

Artist’s Proofs – Edition of 10

Hors d'Commerce (Impressions by the Artist) - Edition of 4

Hors d'Commerce (Artist’s Proofs) – Edition of

Plate: 14 ¼” x 18 3/8” (zinc)

Krishna Reddy’s final print, Woman of Sunflower, brings together the central themes that defined his life’s work human form, nature, and spiritual transcendence. In this deeply reflective print, Reddy unites his characteristic botanical imagery with elongated human figures and delicate, grid-like structures.

In Woman of Sunflower, the boundaries between figure and environment dissolve. The human form merges seamlessly with natural elements, evoking a profound sense of unity and inner illumination. As a capstone to his career, the print is not only a testament to Reddy’s technical mastery but also a poetic expression of his enduring quest for meaning, connection, and harmony with the world.

It stands as a powerful and fitting conclusion to his artistic journey.

Centennial Timeline: Krishna Reddy 1925-2025

1925

Krishna Reddy was born in the village of Nandanoor, near Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh, India. His father, a farm laborer who also painted temple murals 85, introduced him to visual expression at an early age. Recognized early for his artistic talent, Reddy attended the Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh, founded by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. The school emphasized community service, noncompetitive learning, and inner discipline values that would deeply shape Reddy’s artistic and philosophical worldview throughout his life.

1942

At the age of 17, Krishna Reddy became actively involved in India’s struggle for independence. During the Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi, he created hundreds of figurative protest posters, which he secretly pasted across town at night. Deeply committed to the cause, Reddy also participated in nonviolent demonstrations and was imprisoned multiple times for his activism. This early engagement with political resistance and collective struggle would leave a lasting impression on his artistic, sociopolitical and ethical outlook.

1942–1946

In his late teens, Krishna Reddy enrolled at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal, an experimental institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore as an alternative to colonial models of education. The university emphasized open-air learning, cross-disciplinary exploration, and the integration of art, science, and philosophy. There, Reddy studied under renowned artists Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij, and pursued coursework in botany and biology, disciplines that would later shape the organic and biomorphic imagery in his prints and sculptures. This formative period deepened his commitment to art as a holistic, life-integrated practice grounded in both nature and humanism.

1947

As Krishna Reddy completed his Diploma in Fine Arts at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, he

developed a lasting interest in printmaking, experimenting with woodcut, engraving, etching, and lithography. Shortly after graduating, he was appointed Head of the Arts Department at the College of Fine Arts, Kalakshetra, in Madras. This marked the beginning of his dual path as both artist and educator.

1948

While continuing to teach in Madras, Krishna Reddy joined the Arundale Montessori Teachers’ Training Centre, where he reconnected with Jiddu Krishnamurti and engaged in regular discussions on art, education, and spiritual inquiry. During this period, he focused primarily on portrait painting and sculpture. Reddy also pursued graduate studies at the Theosophical College in a nearby town and began spending time at his alma mater, Rishi Valley School. There, he created a series of large-scale murals, blending his early training with evolving philosophical ideas.

1949

Encouraged by Jiddu Krishnamurti, who recommended that he further his artistic studies abroad, Krishna Reddy traveled to London to enroll at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he apprenticed with the renowned sculptor Henry Moore. He also attended programs at the Institute of Contemporary Art, engaging with leading artists and thinkers such as Graham Sutherland, Howard Hodgkin, and Herbert Read. During this time, Reddy met Krishna Menon, India’s first High Commissioner to the UK, who urged him to continue his artistic development in Paris. Krishnamurti, whose philosophy and friendship became lifelong sources of influence, remained an important mentor throughout Reddy’s career.

1950

In 1950, Krishna Reddy moved to Paris, which had reestablished itself as a global center for modern art in the postwar era. The city’s artistic community, especially the cafés of Montparnasse, served as vital crossroads for avant-garde ideas, where artists, writers, and intellectuals from around the world gathered to exchange and debate new concepts. Immersed in this dynamic environment, Reddy met influential figures such as Constantin Brâncuși and regularly participated in animated discussions on art and aesthetics.

He also visited the studios of leading modernists, including Fernand Léger and the Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine. It was Zadkine who introduced Reddy to Stanley William Hayter, who had just returned to Paris to revive his influential printmaking workshop, Atelier 17. Originally founded in Paris in 1927, Atelier 17 had relocated to New York during World War II, where it became a pioneering center for experimental printmaking.

Reddy quickly formed a close bond with Hayter, who became his mentor, collaborator, and lifelong friend. At Atelier 17, Reddy began merging his sculptural sensibilities with advanced printmaking techniques, laying the foundation for his groundbreaking innovations in intaglio and color viscosity printing.

1951–52

When Krishna Reddy joined Atelier 17 in 1951, Hayter had only recently reestablished the influential workshop in Paris. The postwar environment presented new challenges for printmaking, and it was uncertain whether the studio would regain its prewar vitality. Reddy’s arrival, driven by his enthusiasm for experimentation, proved pivotal. His energy and vision helped reenergize the workshop and reaffirmed Atelier 17’s role as a global center for avant-garde technical innovation.

At the studio, intaglio printing became Reddy’s primary focus and would ultimately define his artistic legacy. Drawing on his sculptural background, he began treating the printing plate as a threedimensional surface that could be carved and shaped like a relief sculpture.

Collaborating closely with Hayter and fellow Indian artist Kaiko Moti, Reddy co -developed a groundbreaking process using colored inks of varying viscosities. By carefully adjusting the oil content of each ink, they pioneered a method that enabled complex, multi-colored images to be printed from a single plate in a single pass.

In 1952, the first two prints made with the newly developed viscosity technique attracted immediate attention and were widely acclaimed within Paris’s printmaking community. They were recognized as a major breakthrough in color printmaking, cementing Reddy’s reputation as an innovator and marking the beginning of his international recognition.

1952–1956

Between 1952 and 1958, Krishna Reddy entered a formative period of intensive study and artistic innovation. During these years, he produced a body of prints deeply informed by biological themes, a conceptual thread rooted in his earlier education in botany and biology at Santiniketan during the 1940s. These works reveal his sustained interest in the structures and processes of natural life, which he translated into abstract, dynamic visual language.

Reddy's formal education during this period advanced on several fronts. He earned a Certificate in Fine Arts at the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London, studying under the eminent sculptor Henry Moore. Further refining his sculptural sensibility, he continued his studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris under Ossip Zadkine. At the same time, he specialized in gravure techniques at Atelier 17, under the direction of Stanley William Hayter, whose workshop had become synonymous with experimental and collaborative approaches to printmaking. Complementing these experiences, Reddy also undertook further training at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, studying sculpture with Marino Marini, which further broadened his artistic vocabulary.

Recognition of Reddy’s achievements soon followed. In 1956, he received his first international accolade Honorable Mention at the Annual International Print Show organized by The Print Club in Philadelphia for his work Form in Space.

Kaiko Moti, 1952

1957-58

In 1957, Reddy was appointed Assistant Director of Atelier 17, a position that reflected his growing influence within the international printmaking community. The following year, he returned to India for his first solo exhibition, held at Kumar Gallery in New Delhi. Founded in 1955, Kumar Gallery had quickly become a central venue for the promotion of modern Indian art. The exhibition provided Reddy with a significant opportunity to present his distinctive fusion of modernist abstraction and organic imagery in his homeland.

1959–1963

Krishna Reddy presented a series of solo exhibitions across India, Europe, and the United States, marking his growing international presence, including exhibitions at the Egmore Art Museum in Madras, Galerie Von Hulsen in Holland, Associated American Artists in New York, and Kunika Art Center in New Delhi. During this period, his prints reflected a deep engagement with natural forms and dynamic processes from unfolding flowers to flowing water expressed through a visual language of rhythmic motion and radiating structures.

Around this time, Reddy married American artist Shirley E. Witebsky, whom he had met at Atelier 17 in Paris.

1964

The year 1964 marked a period of significant new directions in Krishna Reddy’s career, encompassing artistic production, international collaboration, and academic recognition. He was invited as a Guest Artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where he created Landscape, his first editioned lithograph.

Later that year, Reddy and his wife, Shirley Witebsky, traveled to Montreal, where they collaborated on a monumental stone sculpture as part of the International Sculpture Symposium at Mont Royale Park. The resulting work, Aspiration, reflected his enduring commitment to large-scale sculptural forms and was commissioned for public installation as part of the symposium’s program.

During this period, Reddy’s academic stature also rose. He served as Visiting Artist at the Fort Worth Art Center in Texas and as Guest Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where he led a printmaking seminar.

While in North America, Reddy renewed his friendship with Bob Blackburn, director of the Printmaking Workshop in New York, whom he had met at earlier at Atelier 17. This reconnection initiated a lasting relationship that would prove increasingly important in Reddy’s later career in the United States.

Upon his return to Paris, Reddy was appointed Co-Director of Atelier 17 by Stanley William Hayter. This appointment, which he held until 1976, formally acknowledged his growing authority within the

Shirley E Witebsky, Metamorphoses c. 1960

international printmaking community and solidified his position at the forefront of experimental graphic art.

1966

Tragically, Krishna Reddy’s wife, Shirley Witebsky, passed away in 1966, only two years after their collaborative journey to Montreal. Her untimely death marked a profound personal loss for Reddy, closing a deeply creative and formative chapter in his life and leaving a lasting imprint on his artistic and emotional world.

1968

By 1968, Krishna Reddy had been away from India for over two decades and had earned an international reputation as a master printmaker and teacher. The political upheaval in Paris that year, marked by widespread student and worker protests, stirred memories of his own early social and political activism in 1940s India. Deeply moved by the energy and urgency of the demonstrations, Reddy created Demonstrators (1968) a powerful print accompanied by a series of resin and bronze sculptures. “The upheavals during the revolution in Paris... the crowds of people marching, gathering and talking influenced this work,” he later reflected. This moment marked a decisive shift in his art, as he turned away from purely nature-based abstraction toward more human-centered and socially engaged subjects.

That same year, his growing reputation was affirmed when Wave was selected for the "Experts Choice" exhibition at The Print Club, Philadelphia, curated by Gabor Peterdi.

Also in 1968, Reddy began teaching at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop in New York. Invited by Blackburn, whom he had first met in postwar Paris, Reddy brought new technical rigor to the Workshop. His mastery of viscosity printing expanded creative possibilities for the community of artists there, beginning a teaching relationship that would continue for over thirty years.

1968-1973

Following the pivotal year of 1968, Krishna Reddy’s work between 1968 and 1973 continued to move in a new direction. Moving further away from his earlier abstractions inspired by nature, he now focused on the human figure, exploring themes of vulnerability, connection, and spiritual experience. His prints from this period balance careful observation with abstract design. Works like Woman and Her Reflections (1971) transform detailed drawings into slender, elongated forms influenced by Giacometti and African sculpture, while Life Movement (1972) uses soft grids and simplified shapes to suggest dynamic human motion.

Across these years, Reddy’s art became increasingly centered on the human condition, marking a profound shift in his creative journey. Through refined lines, subtle color, and abstracted forms, his prints captured both the fragility and resilience of life in a rapidly changing world.

Late 1960s-1972

From the late 1960s to 1972, Krishna Reddy’s life became more global and dynamic than ever. He spent much of each year traveling, sharing his knowledge through lectures and workshops at schools and art centers across the world. Yet, India remained close to his heart. He returned every year, eager to reconnect and pass on the techniques and ideas he continued to refine.

During this time, Reddy met American artist Judith Blum at Atelier 17. Their shared passion for art and teaching soon blossomed into a deep partnership, and Judith became his second wife. Together, they traveled to India, where they adopted a baby girl, Aparna, affectionately called Apu. This new chapter marked by love, family, and artistic discovery added an even more personal dimension to Reddy’s creative journey.

Judith Blum, Taking a Trip 1966

Krishna Reddy was honored with the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian awards, conferred by the President of India, Shri V.V. Giri. Recognizing his pioneering contributions to printmaking and his role as an international ambassador of Indian art, the award celebrated Reddy’s innovative techniques and his deep commitment to the arts as both a creator and educator.

1976

Adopting Apu in the early 1970s marked a deeply personal and creative turning point for Krishna Reddy. Fatherhood inspired a tender shift in his work, leading to a poignant series of four child-centered prints, each reflecting the intimacy of daily life and his enduring exploration of form and emotion through printmaking.

In 1976 Reddy met Per-Olov Börjeson, a prominent Swedish gallery owner curating a portfolio to honor Nobel laureates. Invited to contribute a work dedicated to Rabindranath Tagore, Reddy created Child Descending, a print of subtle grace and reverence. This introduction sparked a lasting collaboration, with Galerie Börjeson later publishing Reddy’s magnum opus, The Great Clown, an ambitious and technically complex print celebrated as one of his finest achievements.

1977

Krishna Reddy moved to New York in 1977 and joined New York University as Professor and Director of the Department of Graphics and Printmaking. He also appointed Professor at SUNY Stony Brook and Andrew Mellon Visiting Professor at the Cooper Union School of Arts and Architecture.

That same year, he founded the Color Print Atelier at NYU, a specialized workshop dedicated to advancing color printmaking and providing working artists and teachers with hands-on opportunities to refine their craft.

1978

By 1978 Krishna Reddy’s international recognition and artistic engagements expanded notably. His prints were exhibited widely across Japan, including solo shows at Galerie Vivant (Tokyo), En Gallery (Kochi City), and Clark Gallery (Sapporo). That same year, he was honored at the United Nations Headquarters on November 17 during the first day issue of the UN TCDC stamp. To commemorate the event, the World United Nations Associations (WUNA) presented Reddy’s print Three Figures as an art reproduction on the stamp’s first day cover. He also served as Artist in Residence at Yale University’s Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Also in 1978, Krishna Reddy inaugurated the printmaking studios at Garhi, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. During this time, he conducted seminars and lecture demonstrations, sharing his expertise in printmaking techniques. His involvement played a significant role in advancing the printmaking facilities and education at the Akademi.

1978–1997

Starting in 1978, the clown became an important and lasting theme in Krishna Reddy’s work, inspiring

him for nearly two decades. The idea came from a visit to the circus in the early 1970s with his young daughter Apu, where he became fascinated by the clown’s movement and changing forms.

In his prints, the clown appeared as a thin, elongated figure, drawn with delicate, flowing lines that showed both energy and fragility. Some works, like Clown-Jongleur (1978), captured the clown’s lively and skillful acts, while others, like Clown Falling (1981) and Clown Dissolving (1997), expressed its more emotional and vulnerable side.

This series allowed Reddy to bring playfulness and vivid color into his work. It reached its peak with The Great Clown (1981), a large and technically complex print that stands among his most ambitious creations.

1979

Reddy continued his role as an esteemed visiting artist. He was Artist in Residence at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Guest Artist at the Kala Institute in Berkeley, a key center for printmaking. That year, his work was featured in Prints by Sculptors at Roy G. Biv Gallery, New York, alongside major figures like Archipenko and Oldenburg. He also traveled to Morocco, where he was invited to the International Symposium of Artists, Writers, and Filmmakers at the Cultural Palace in Asilah, further cementing his global stature.

1980–1982

Between 1980 and 1982, Krishna Reddy’s career reached a pinnacle of artistic and academic distinction. During this period, he held visiting appointments at several leading institutions, including the Kala Institute of Graphics in Berkeley, Columbia University, the Pratt Graphic Center, the University of California, Davis, and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

In 1981, Reddy’s work was celebrated with his first major museum retrospective, organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts. This exhibition later traveled to India, where it was presented at leading venues, including the Lalit Kala Akademi, before being acquired by the Chitrakala Parishath in Bangalore for its permanent collection.

During this period, Reddy created what is widely considered his magnum opus, The Great Clown (1981). Working with Galerie Borjeson, a prominent Swedish gallery, he produced over a hundred major color variations of this monumental print. In 1986, the gallery mounted an exhibition in Malmö showcasing the work, accompanied by a publication featuring forty-four of these impressions, offering a kaleidoscopic perspective on one of Reddy’s most ambitious and expressive achievements.

In 1982, Reddy’s stature was further affirmed when he was invited to participate in the exhibition, Thirteen Innovative International Contemporary Printmakers, jointly organized by the Ashmolean Museum and the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. Exhibiting alongside twelve iconic contemporaries such as Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, S.W. Hayter, and Roberto Matta, Reddy’s inclusion underscored his position among the most influential figures in the international printmaking community.

That same year, he received the Gagan Abani Puraskar, awarded by Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan and conferred by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This prestigious recognition affirmed his enduring connection to the institution where his artistic journey had first begun.

1984

In 1994 Krishna Reddy was honored with the title of Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) by Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati. That year, he served as Artist-in-Residence at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bombay, engaging with the local artistic community.

Reddy’s work also received widespread recognition through a series of retrospectives held across India at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Calcutta, organized in collaboration with the Indian Council

for Cultural Relations followed by retrospectives at two other important venues: the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay and the Roopankar Museum in Bhopal.

1985

In 1995 Krishna Reddy’s work was celebrated in three notable exhibitions across France and the United States, underscoring his international stature. In Paris, he was featured alongside his mentor Stanley William Hayter at Maison de la Gravure, in a joint exhibition highlighting their innovations in viscosity printing.

That same year, his works were shown in Contemporary Works by Five Indian Artists at the Great Neck Library in New York, as part of the Festival of India, introducing his practice to a broader American audience. In Paris, Reddy was also included in Artistes Indiens en France at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, an exhibition organized by the French Ministry of Culture to honor Indian artists contributing to the French art world.

1988–1990

In 1988, Krishna Reddy published Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes, a seminal book that brought together his instructional writings.

Between 1988 and 1990, Krishna Reddy’s work was the subject of several exhibitions across Mexico, starting with Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This exhibition was part of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centenary celebrations, supported by the Embassy of India in Mexico. Following this, a traveling retrospective showcased Reddy’s work at seven cultural institutions throughout Mexico.

1990

In 1990, Krishna Reddy returned to socially engaged art with Sorrow of the World (1990), followed by Violence and Sorrow (1995). These two powerful prints reflect his deep grief and protest in response to the devastation of the Gulf War. These works reaffirmed his lifelong belief that art should address the human condition and bear witness to the moral and emotional impact of global events.

1993-1995

In 1993, Krishna Reddy contributed to The Hope and Optimism Portfolio, a global project supported by UNESCO. Proceeds from the project helped educational and cultural programs in Africa.

That same year, a major retrospective of his work was held at Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore. This was followed by successive solo exhibitions at key venues: Gallery Espace, New Delhi, Chemould Art Gallery, Bombay in 1994, and Galerie 88, Calcutta in 1995, further reaffirming his stature as one of India’s most influential and widely celebrated modern artists

1996-1998

In 1996, New York University organized, Krishna Reddy: Early Engravings: 50s & '60s, an exhibition that explored his early years at Atelier 17. The show later traveled to India, appearing at Gallery Espace, New Delhi (1997), Galerie 88, Calcutta, and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (1998).

In 1997, Krishna Reddy created Woman of Sunflower, his final print, which brings together the central themes that shaped his art humanity, nature, and transcendence. Merging botanical forms with elongated human figures and subtle, grid-like patterns, the work embodies his lifelong pursuit of harmony between the individual spirit and the natural world.

Though he retired from active printmaking soon after, Reddy continued to teach and reflect on his artistic journey. In his 1998 essay Art Expression as a Learning Process, he described art-making not as a quest for technical mastery, but as an act of ongoing discovery. Drawing from decades of studio practice and teaching, Reddy explored the deep interconnection between the human mind and the universe,

suggesting that true artistic expression emerges from wonder and a spiritual desire to align with nature’s rhythms.

2000–2002

At the turn of the millennium, Krishna Reddy entered a period of emeritus honors, marking widespread recognition of his extraordinary contributions as both artist and educator a journey that had begun decades earlier at Santiniketan. In 2000, he served as Artist in Residence at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, and the Southern Graphics Council of America named him Artist-Printmaker Emeritus of the Year, accompanied by a dedicated exhibition at the University of Miami.

In 2002, his long and influential academic career was celebrated when he was named Professor Emeritus of Art and Art Education by New York University, where he had taught for more than twenty-five years.

2007–2008

In 2007, Krishna’s Cosmos: The Creativity of an Artist, Sculptor & Teacher by Ratnottama Sengupta was published by Mapin, offering fresh insights into Reddy’s multifaceted practice.

The following year, Thomas Erben Gallery in New York presented Krishna Reddy – A Life’s Movement, a focused retrospective spanning works from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

2011

In 2011, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi presented Krishna Reddy –The Embodied Image, the most comprehensive exhibition of his work to date. Curated by Roobina Karode, the show featured his drawings, prints, and sculptures, offering a wide view of his long and varied career.

2016

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented Workshop and Legacy: Stanley William Hayter, Krishna Reddy, Zarina Hashmi, an important exhibition recognizing Reddy’s major contributions to modern printmaking. Curated by Navina Haidar and Jennifer Farrell, the show placed Reddy alongside his Atelier 17 mentor Stanley William Hayter and fellow artist Zarina Hashmi, highlighting their shared commitment to advancing print as a vital artistic language.

2018

Krishna Reddy passed away at his home in Manhattan on August 22, 2018, at the age of 93, bringing to a close a prolific and influential career that spanned continents and generations. His passing was marked by a glowing obituary published in The New York Times on August 31, written by art critic Holland Cotter, who reflected on Reddy’s global significance. “Mr. Reddy belonged to a generation of artists who gained international recognition after India’s independence from England in 1947," Cotter wrote. "He demonstrated that Abstract art was not solely a Western invention but had distinctive sources and forms in other cultures.”

The obituary was accompanied by a portrait by photographer Ram Rahman, a long-time family friend, capturing Reddy in his later years with the quiet dignity that defined his life and work. His passing marked not only the loss of a pioneering printmaker but also the conclusion of a life devoted to advancing a global and inclusive vision of modern art.

2024–2025

In celebration of Krishna Reddy’s centennial, major exhibitions across India and the United States explored his legacy as a pioneering printmaker, sculptor, and teacher. Together, they offered a rich portrait of an artist whose work bridged cultures, mediums, and generations. From his groundbreaking viscosity prints to his deeply humanist vision, the exhibitions highlighted Reddy’s lifelong commitment

to experimentation, collaboration, and spiritual inquiry. This global tribute reaffirmed his enduring impact on modern and contemporary art, and his role as a guiding force for artists worldwide.

Of Friendships: Krishna Reddy & His World

Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai: 5 April – 15 June 2024

Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, Kolkata: 20 July – 21 September 2024

Renowned Indian gallery Experimenter has represented Krishna Reddy (and his estate) for a decade, mounting numerous notable exhibitions of his work. As part of the global centennial celebrations honoring the life and legacy of Krishna Reddy, Of Friendships: Krishna Reddy & His World at Experimenter gallery inaugurated a year-long reflection on his profound contributions to 20th-century art. Spanning two locations Mumbai and Kolkata this two-part exhibition offered a moving portrait not only of Reddy’s extraordinary achievements as a printmaker and sculptor, but also of his generous spirit as a teacher, collaborator, and friend.

The exhibition foregrounded Reddy’s remarkable capacity to form enduring relationships across geographies, ideologies, and generations. Alongside a selection of rare and early works by Reddy himself, the exhibition brought together works by artist friends: Stanley William Hayter, under whose mentorship Reddy developed the viscosity printing technique at Atelier 17; pioneering Indian modernists like Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee; and international artists such as Zarina, Mona Saudi, Judith Blum Reddy (Reddy’s wife), and Nalini Malani.

Curated with the warmth and intimacy that defined Reddy’s artistic ethos, Of Friendships was not only a tribute to his technical innovations but also a celebration of the humanist values that animated his practice collaboration, curiosity, and cross-cultural exchange. It served as an early and essential contribution to the centennial tributes, reaffirming Krishna Reddy’s place as a visionary who shaped modern printmaking.

Rhyme Unbroken: Krishna Reddy as Artist and Perpetual Student Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru: 10 August 2024 – 5 January 2025

As a landmark event India in the centennial year of Krishna Reddy, the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, presented Rhyme Unbroken: Krishna Reddy as Artist and Perpetual Student, a major retrospective that explored the full arc of Reddy’s artistic evolution and philosophical inquiries. Bringing together 42 works, including seminal viscosity prints, a sculpture, and his original tools and matrices, the exhibition offered an in-depth view into the studio practice.

Rhyme Unbroken honored Reddy’s identity as a lifelong learner one who saw art as a pathway to understanding the self and the cosmos. Curated by Arnika Ahldag and Kuzhali Jaganathan and based upon a collection of Reddy prints donated to the museum by Harsha and Srilatha Reddy, the exhibition was both a scholarly homage and a celebration of Reddy’s spiritual and pedagogical legacy.

Krishna Reddy: The Mystery of Time and Becoming Atlanta Printmakers Studio, Atlanta, GA: October 5 – November 9, 2024

Marking the first centennial exhibition of Krishna Reddy in the United States, The Mystery of Time and Becoming was focused celebration of the artist’s pioneering contributions to modern printmaking. Curated by collector and scholar Dr. Amit Prasad in conjunction with the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, the exhibition offered an intimate look at Reddy’s groundbreaking viscosity prints created during the 1950s and ’60s his most innovative and fertile years at Atelier 17 in Paris.

Krishna Reddy: Heaven in a Wildflower Print Center New York, Jordan Schnitzer Gallery: January 23 – May 21, 2025

Heaven in a Wildflower marked a major milestone in the centennial celebrations of Krishna Reddy, presenting the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the visionary Indian artist in New York in over forty years. Curated by Sarah Burney, in collaboration with an advisory committee of Reddy’s close colleagues, the exhibition brought together over 50 of his prints alongside key sculptures, drawings, ephemera, and studio tools, largely drawn from the artist’s estate.

Hosted at Print Center New York’s Jordan Schnitzer Gallery, the exhibition offered an unprecedented opportunity to immerse in world of Reddy’s art. Contextualized through his retrofitted tools, sculptural studies, and meditative sketches, the show traced the trajectory of a profoundly philosophical artist whose enduring legacy as a teacher and innovator shaped generations of printmakers in the New York area.

An illustrated catalog accompanied the exhibition, featuring original essays by curator Sarah Burney and Mark Johnson, printmaker and professor at New York University who worked closely with Reddy. Print Center New York also hosted a symposium on Reddy’s legacy and organized public programs in partnership with the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.

Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art: February 15 – August 17, 2025

Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints, a groundbreaking exhibition placed Reddy’s pioneering intaglio works in dialogue with a new generation of South Asian artists exploring the body as a site of transformation, identity, and inquiry. The exhibition featured a selection of Reddy’s viscosity prints, highlighting his engagement with metaphysical possibilities of the human figure in 1970s and 1980s. His prints stood in compelling conversation with contemporary works by artists such as Chitra Ganesh and Jyoti Bhatt, reinforcing Reddy’s relevance to current artistic dialogues.

Curated by Carol Huh, the exhibition draws from a significant recent gift from the Gaur Collection, with additional loans from the same collection.

The exhibition not only reaffirmed Reddy’s stature as a master printmaker but also illuminated the enduring resonance of his ideas in the global contemporary. As the Smithsonian’s first major exhibition of South Asian print and photographic practices in this expanded format, Body Transformed marked a significant milestone in Reddy’s centennial year and in the museum’s evolving commitment to the modern and contemporary.

Krishna Reddy – Movements in Life

Philadelphia Museum of Art: August 1 – December 1, 2025

Images to be added

This exhibition, timed to be the capstone of events celebrating the centenary of Reddy’s birth, explores his abstract images of seeds, flowers, insects, water, and the human figure. Dazzling feats of color and texture, Reddy’s color prints vibrate with the cosmic energy that, according to his personal philosophy, pulses through and connects all elements of nature. The exhibition articulates how Reddy’s iterative working process was an extension of his spiritual beliefs. As works of art, his prints were imbued with a life force of their own. By modifying an image over time either by reworking his plates or printing in different color combinations a single composition could be given a new life with each printing.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds what is believed to be the only complete set of viscosity intaglio prints produced from all fifty-four plates created by Krishna Reddy over the course of his lifetime. This extraordinary collection, gifted to the museum in 2024 by Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, also includes multiple color variations of several prints, a testament to Reddy’s relentless experimentation with inking techniques and his continual refinement of the viscosity printing process.

As one of the premier institutions for works on paper in the United States, the Philadelphia Museum of Art brings exceptional scholarly and technical expertise to the study of printmaking. In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum conducted a detailed microscopic examination of several prints to study the process variations used by Reddy to produce these unique prints.

Major Institutional Collections

Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Francisco

Air India Art Collection, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Mumbai

Albertina Museum, Vienna

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK

British Museum, London

Brooklyn Museum, New York

Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York

Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA

Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI

Gabinetto Nazionale Delle Stampe, Rome

Gallery of Modern Art, Copenhagen

Government Art Collection, London

Government Museum, Chennai

Grey Gallery Collection, New York University, New York

Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai

Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordon

Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bengaluru, India

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi

Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, KS

Ministère de la Culture, Paris

Museum of Art & Photography (Bengaluru)

Museum of Fine Art, Boston

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York)

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Museum of Modern Art, Rome

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

National Gallery of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

National Gallery, Oslo

National Gallery, Stockholm

Österreichisches Kulturzentrum, Vienna

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

Préfecture de la Seine – Direction des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Royal Museum of Fine Art, Copenhagen

Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai

Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC

StadtPalais – Museum für Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Tate Britian, London

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The RISD Museum, Providence, RI

The Syracuse University Art Museum, Syracuse, NY

University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, HI

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA

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Glossary of Printmaking Terms

A la poupée

A method of applying different colored inks to specific areas of an intaglio plate using small fabric daubs (poupées).

Aquatint

An intaglio printmaking technique that creates tonal effects by etching microscopic pits into the plate to hold ink.

Broken color

A method where two or more colors are juxtaposed or layered without fully blending, creating a sense of vibration or movement.

Burins

Sharp engraving tools used to incise lines into a metal plate by hand.

Burnisher

A smooth tool used to polish and lighten areas on a plate by compressing or smoothing the surface.

Collage transfer

The process of combining and transferring photographic or drawn images onto a printmaking plate for further manipulation.

Contact printing

A surface inking technique where ink is gently pressed onto raised surfaces to create soft color transitions.

Dot screen

A transparent sheet with a regular grid of dots used in photo-etching to create halftones.

Drypoint

An intaglio technique where lines are scratched into a plate with a hard-pointed needle, creating burrs that produce a rich, velvety line.

Engraving

A printmaking technique in which lines are incised into a metal plate with a tool called a burin.

Etching

A process of using acid or mordants to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio.

Flex-shaft rotary tool

A powered tool with a flexible shaft used for fine sculpting or engraving on a metal plate.

Gouging

Scooping or carving into a plate to remove material and create expressive marks or textures.

Grids

Structured arrangements of vertical and horizontal lines used to organize compositions and guide form.

Halftone

A pattern of dots or lines that simulate tonal gradation in printmaking, often created using aquatint or photographic screens.

Hand tools

Manual tools like burins, scrapers, and needles used to manipulate a plate without electricity.

Intaglio

A printing process where ink is held in recessed areas of a plate and transferred to paper under pressure.

Juxtaposition (color)

The placement of contrasting or harmonious colors next to one another to enhance visual impact.

Kodalith

A high-contrast photographic film used to create stencils or photo transfers in printmaking.

Linear structure

Compositional elements based on lines that organize or articulate the image, often central to Reddy’s prints.

Machine grinder

A power tool with an abrasive wheel used to shape or finish metal plates.

Mezzotint

An intaglio printmaking technique that creates rich tonal ranges by roughening a plate's surface and then smoothing areas to create lighter tones.

Open bite

An etching technique that uses acid to bite open, unprotected areas of the plate, creating large recessed areas.

Perspective lines

Linear elements used to create the illusion of depth or spatial recession in a print.

Photo halftone

A method of creating tonal variation using a dot screen exposed onto a photosensitive plate, often etched to produce a halftone pattern.

Photo-sensitive emulsion

A light-sensitive coating applied to a plate, allowing photographic images or patterns to be etched.

Photographic dot screen

A screen with a dot pattern used in photo-etching to create halftones.

Plate

A flat metal surface, typically zinc or copper, that serves as the matrix in printmaking.

Pointillist printing

A printmaking technique where dots or small strokes of color are placed in close proximity to visually mix and create rich color fields.

Relief

A printmaking method where ink is applied to the raised surfaces of a plate.

Relief printing

A method where the raised surface of the plate holds the ink and is printed, in contrast to intaglio.

Rollers (hard and soft)

Tools used to apply ink to a plate's surface; their density affects how ink is deposited over relief and intaglio areas.

Roulette

A hand tool with a small wheel used to create textures or dotted patterns on a plate.

Sanding disc

A circular abrasive tool used with mechanical sanders to polish or smooth metal plate surfaces for printing.

Scraper

A tool used to reduce the height of raised areas or remove burrs from a plate.

Scraping

Removing material or burrs from a plate surface to adjust tones or smooth transitions.

Serrated tool

A tool with a jagged edge used to create textures, often leaving distinctive patterns when used on metal plates.

Simultaneous color printing

A printmaking method where multiple colors are printed in a single pass from one plate using inks of different viscosities.

Superimposition

Layering multiple colors or images on top of one another in a single print.

Surface color inking

Inking the top surface of a plate, usually with a roller, distinct from inking the intaglio recesses.

Tarlatan

A stiff, open-weave fabric used for wiping ink from the surface of an intaglio plate.

Tonal gradation

The transition from light to dark areas in a print, often achieved with halftone or aquatint.

Tonal recession

A technique using gradients of color or value to create the illusion of depth, where lighter tones recede and darker tones advance.

Transparent ink

Ink that allows underlying colors or textures to remain visible, often used to create layered or luminous effects.

Vibrotool

A vibrating power tool used for engraving or adding texture to a metal plate.

AUTHORS

Christina Taylor is a conservator specializing in works of art on paper, currently serving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Beyond her conservation practice, Taylor is dedicated to education, developing and leading hands-on workshops that delve into printmaking techniques for conservators. Taylor's professional journey encompasses esteemed institutions such as the Harvard Art Museums, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the National Gallery of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, where she honed her expertise in paper conservation.

Christina Weyl is an independent art historian and curator specializing in modern printmaking. She is the author of The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York, which brought renewed attention to the vital role of women in the experimental print studio founded by Stanley William Hayter. Beyond her writing, Weyl has curated exhibitions like "Two Generations of Women Printmakers: Atelier 17 and The Art Students League," further amplifying the voices of these pioneering artists.

Heather Hughes is the Kathy and Ted Fernberger Associate Curator of Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she oversees print projects spanning from the fifteenth century to the present. A graduate of Dartmouth College, she earned her MA and PhD in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her current position, Heather held curatorial roles at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Rijksmuseum.

At PMA, Heather has curated notable exhibitions including In Bloom: Botanical Illustration Through the Centuries, Diana Scultori: An Engraver in Renaissance Rome (2024), and Splash: Beachgoers and Bathers (2025) philamuseum.org. Her current exhibition Krishna Reddy: The Movement of Life, is a landmark exhibition tracing Reddy’s abstract nature based prints, celebrating his centenary birth and highlighting his experimental printmaking techniques.

Carol Huh has been the first curator of contemporary art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art since 2007. She focuses on current artistic production related to Asia through exhibitions, acquisitions, and public programs.

Huh has curated numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, including the museum’s series of contemporary art installations in the Sackler pavilion, featuring works by artists such as Y.Z. Kami, Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei, and Chiharu Shiota. She organized "Moving Perspectives," the Sackler’s first series of exhibitions focusing on video art from Asia. Her special exhibitions include "Japan Modern: Photographs from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection" (2018), "Notes from the Desert: Photographs by Gauri Gill" (2016), and "Symbolic Cities: The Work of Ahmed Mater" (2016).

In 2025, Huh curated "Body Transformed – Contemporary South Asian Photography and Prints," which includes works by print artists Chitra Ganesh, Jyoti Bhatt and Krishna Reddy.

86 All author bios to be edited by the authors.

Jeffrey Wechsler is a scholar of 20th-century American art, with a particular focus on abstract expressionism and Asian American artists. From 1983 to 2011, Wechsler served as Senior Curator at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. During his tenure, he curated numerous groundbreaking exhibitions that illuminated underrepresented facets of American art. Notably, he organized "Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction, 1945–1970," a seminal exhibition that highlighted the contributions of Asian American artists to abstract art.

Wechsler’s exhibitions on Indian Art include Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collections (2002); Modern Indian Works on Paper (2006); Natvar Bhavsar: The Dimensions of Color (2007); Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from indigenous Communities in India, traveling exhibition for International Art and Artists, joint curatorship (2017). Jeffrey Wechsler also wrote a major essay in Mohan Samant: Painting (Volume 1), published by Mapin in 2013.

Judith K. Brodsky is a distinguished artist, printmaker, and feminist art scholar whose contributions have significantly shaped contemporary art and academia. As a Professor Emerita in the Department of Visual Arts at Rutgers University, Brodsky co-founded the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, fostering interdisciplinary scholarship and promoting gender equity in the arts.

In 1986, she established the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, later renamed the Brodsky Center in her honor, which became a leading institution for contemporary printmaking and papermaking. Brodsky's artistic work, primarily in printmaking, is held in over 100 museums and corporate collections. Brodsky has incorporated several printmaking methodologies in her printmaking practice, including viscosity intaglio printmaking.

Umesh Gaur is a collector and scholar whose work has significantly shaped the field of modern and contemporary Indian art in the U.S. Since 1995, Gaur and his wife, Sunanda, have assembled the Gaur Collection an encyclopedic and deeply researched repository of more than 800 works, encompassing paintings, works on paper, prints, sculptures, photographs, and indigenous art. Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive private holdings of Indian modernism outside India, the Gaur Collection has been the focus of exhibitions at several university museums as well as leading institutions, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Gaur has edited four scholarly volumes on the collection, featuring essays by prominent curators and art historians, and authored five academic papers, including three for the journal Arts of Asia. His commitment to expanding public and scholarly awareness of Indian art was evident as early as 2002, when he curated the first comprehensive U.S. Museum exhibition of modern Indian art at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. In 2007, he also spearheaded a pioneering exhibition on contemporary Indian photography at the Newark Museum.

Among his most focused areas of scholarship is the work of master printmaker Krishna Reddy. Over two decades, Gaur has assembled a complete set of prints made from all 54 known plates by Reddy many represented through multiple color and technique variations. This collection, the most comprehensive of its kind in private hands, serves as a vital scholarly archive and a benchmark for the study of Reddy’s innovations in viscosity printmaking.