The Barga summer season has as one of its high spots the annual open day at the workshops of Swietlan Kraczyna.
As you can hear him say in the short interview (in English) recorded in the workshop this afternoon, Swietlan refuses to call it a school or the people taking part as students because it is a work in progress, a workshop with mature artists. This year there are some new influences and directions working amongst the international group of people taking part and actually only one person using the 4 plate colour printing method that Swietlan Kraczyna is so famous for.
But that too neatly fits into the recent output and exhibition by Swietlan which is also not coloured but large scale single colour drawings (article and full 30 minute interview with Swietlan here)
Amelia Egland | Alicia Goshe | Swietlan Kraczyna | Helena La Rota- Lopez | Marissa Mele | Liza Stace | Kate Yanish
Swietlan Kraczyna was born on the Polish-Russian border March 1, 1940. At the outbreak of World War the family moved westward and at the end of the war in 1945 ended up in the refugee camps in Germany. After six years, in 1951, the family emigrated to the United States.
Swietlan received his BFA degree in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and in 1962 he spent a year in Italy doing independent studies in Rome and Florence on an EHP scholarship from RISD. In 1962-64 he went back to the United States to study for a MFA degree and received a teaching fellowship at the University of Southern Illinois. In the autumn of 1964 he returned to Italy and although he lives and works in Florence in the 13th century home of Michelangelo’s teacher, Domenico Ghirlandaio, he exhibits one-man shows annually in the United States.
In 1966 his interests turned completely to the graphic world and at this time he set up the etching department at Villa Schifanoia (Rosary College Graduate School of Fine Arts) in Florence, where he still continues to teach. In 1970 Kraczyna was one of ten artists to represent the United States in the Palazzo Strozzi Biennale di Grafica, and his multi-plate color etchings are represented in the Uffizi Gallery Prints and Drawings Collection. From 1973 until 1980 he worked as the technical assistant to Marino Marini on all his color etchings.
Kraczyna has been invited to different Universities and art schools in the United States, England, Italy, Mexico, and Columbia, and South America to give demonstrations of his own multi-plate color etching technique. He is one of the founders of the “Il Bisonte” International School of Advanced Printmaking in Florence where he teaches all the techniques of color etching, and is also the co-author of “I Segni Incisi”, the first Italian comprehensive textbook on the history and techniques of etching. His site can be seen here
previous open days : 2013 |
