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Klabunde:
A modern master of the complex art of etching
By: Victoria Donohoe
September 5, 1980
Published by the Philadelphia Inquirer For
Charles Klabunde, art is a marvelous, teeming universe of images, and his
20-year retrospective exhibit at Associated American Artists presents the total
of his artistic passion, spelled out in marvelous detail in his virtuoso use of
color etching technique. This
Nebraska-born artist is a fantastically gifted etcher, and you won't see the
likes of this technique anywhere. Klabunde is an artist who elevates printmaking
because he takes great interest in exploiting the special qualities that make
etching an expressive medium with unique characteristics rather than using it,
say, only as a method of reproducing pencil drawings. He knows well how to
handle the thin transparent scrims of color upon color, and he introduces
patterned materials such as lace to obtain the surface quality he wants. His
color sense and a story-telling bias distinguish him. Charles
Klabunde's mood is German, his subject often Roman and his form downright
medieval, and yet his pictures appear decidedly up-to-date in some of the
details of time and place. In his vast vocabulary of human figures and invented
settings and in his overlapped color scrims and delicate nuances of etched line,
a language emerges that conserves his North European viewpoint. Looking at these
prints, we have to believe that Klabunde likes late-Gothic woodcarvings, and the
prints of such old masters as Bruegel, Bosch and Durer. Klabunde's etchings
develop in often surprising ways. Associated
American Artists, 1614 Latimer St., 545-7374. Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m.
to 5:30 p.m. Prices start at $80. The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through
Oct. 1.
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