Gregory Masurovsky 1929-2009

The printmaker and typographer Gregory Masurovsky was born in the Bronx on 26 November 1929, and has died in Paris on 17 July 2009. Masurovsky studied at Black Mountain College (where a number of teachers from the Bauhaus had ended up) and at the Art Students' League in New York. He had lived in Paris since 1954. In France he was particularly celebrated for his 40-year collaboration with the writer Michel Butor on a series of projects, celebrated in an exhibition at the Musée de Pontoise in 2004, "La Plume et la Crayon". Many of Gregory Masurovsky's etchings were published in New York by Sylvan Cole at Associated American Artists, including the one below, which is one of seven delicate etchings made to accompany poems by Carl Sandburg in 1970. It was printed by Atelier Georges Leblanc on B.F.K. Rives, pencil-signed and justified by the artist, one of 150 copies thus out of a total edition of 190.


Gregory Masurovsky, Fog
Etching, 1970

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg
from Chicago Poems, 1916