History of the Santa Fe Etching
Club
The painter Eli
Levin first moved to Santa Fe in 1964. He grew up in
New York where his early inspiration came from the
Social Realists of the WPA generation. Consistent with
the pre-war realist esthetic, Levin also trained as an
intaglio printmaker, in the techniques that had been
rediscovered by the mid-19th century European Etching
Revival.
Levin returned
to New York for a summer in 1980 to study anatomy with
Robert Beverley Hale at the Art Student’s League. In
Hale’s class he met artist Sarah McCarty, who had
recently trained in Scotland as an engraver. She
returned to Santa Fe with him and they formed a
community intaglio studio around Levin’s etching
press, formerly owned and used by Will Shuster. The
group would soon be called the Santa Fe Etching Club,
after the New York Etching Club of 1877, the first
professional organization of etchers to be formed in
the U.S. Both groups followed a time-honored pattern
of sharing a studio, both for its heavy press and for
the purpose of sharing and re-discovering historical
intaglio techniques.
Levin’s group
acquired a life of its own, providing an opportunity
for many local artists to work in the medium.
Importantly, it also acquired a patron, Dr. Robert
Bell, a major prints collector. Dr. Bell undertook to
subsidize its purchases of copper, paper, inks and
tools, in order to promote intaglio printmaking in the
Santa Fe community. Levin managed the Etching Club in
an open-studio format, allowing artists flexible
access to his studio.
Early on,
Thursdays were designated an open-studio day, when
artists could come and go, working through the day
until midnight. This tradition persisted as a regular
function through Levin’s studio relocation to the
Santa Fe Railyard, and later to Canyon Road. It
remains a day that many artists set aside for intaglio
work, although the studio is now open to members most
of the week in its fourth, expanded location on Luisa
Street. Dr. Bell remains the Club’s patron, often
stopping by on Thursday evenings with a selection of
historical prints to pass around for perusal and
inspiration. The Club has hosted yearly exhibits of
work from his collection, such as the 2011 showing of
Goya’s Los
Caprichos and Disasters of War print cycles, and
the 2014 survey of the landscape theme in printmaking,
across five centuries.
Since 2006, the
Etching Club has been closely associated with Argos
Gallery, which shows work by members. As of 2010,
the Etching Club has an expanded, customized work
space in its Luisa St location, offering local
artists a low-cost opportunity to work in the
intaglio medium. Dr. Bell continues his patronage
and overhead costs are managed on a non-profit
basis. The function and goal of the Santa Fe Etching
Club is to promote and exhibit local work in the
medium of copperplate etching and engraving, and to
preserve and pass on those 500-year-old techniques.
In a modern art world increasingly concerned with
digital and conceptual forms, we are pleased to
represent the traditional value of draftsmanship,
and the 500 year old esthetic of intaglio
printmaking.
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