In Plato's Cave: The Art of Ferdinand Springer

I haven't written much on this blog about engravers, perhaps because I started a rather over-ambitious post about engraving in general that still languishes in my unfinished files. So today I'll just talk about one of my favourite twentieth-century engravers, Ferdinand Springer. Not only do I admire the formal precision and grace of his work, I feel an affinity with his choice of subjects, which tend to the philosophical and metaphysical. Late in his career he produced editions of the Tao Te Ching and the Bardo Thodol, and the two earlier sets of prints I have by Springer are for similar subjects - a 1947 edition of Paul Valéry's Socratic dialogue Eupalinos ou l'Architecte and a 1948 edition of Plato's Mythe de la Caverne.

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte IV

Engraving, 1947

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte VI

Engraving, 1947

The line engravings for Eupalinos are a masterclass in how to handle an engraver's burin. Although the end result may look similar, and both are intaglio processes, engraving and etching are very different. Etching is much more like drawing. With the etching needle, the artist can quickly sketch a subject, and the hard work of incising it into the metal plate is all done by the acid, which bites the line into the metal. Engraving, on the other hand, is an intensely physical activity. The engraver drives the burin away from his body, literally ploughing through the metal to gouge out lines. These lines will all be straight, like those of a plough, unless the engraver manoeuvres the plate around with his other hand.

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte VII

Engraving, 1947

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte VIII

Engraving, 1947

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte X

Engraving, 1947

Ferdinand Springer studied engraving at Atelier 17 under Stanley William Hayter in the 1930s. The sheer physicality of engraving absorbed him. He remembered proudly how Le Corbusier said to him, "You trace the furrows like a peasant with his plough" - though of his generation only Roger Vieillard used a burin with such grace.

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte XI

Engraving, 1947

Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte XIII

Engraving, 1947

340 copies were published of Eupalinos, with the engravings printed by Paul Haasen on vélin pur fil à la forme des papeteries du Marais; there were also 28 suites on Annam and 28 on Malacca.

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne I

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne II

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Springer's prints for the myth of Plato's Cave use a mixed technique, combining line engraving with aquatint. 146 copies were published, with the engravings printed on vélin pur fil du Marais by Raymond Haasen, plus 6 suites on Japon and 26 on Arches.

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne III

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne IV

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Painter, sculptor, engraver. Ferdinand Springer was born in Berlin, but moved to Paris at the age of 20, where he studied at the Académie Ranson under Roger Bissière. In his later years, the art of Ferdinand Springer was purely abstract, distinguished by its elegance of line and the way it explores what he called the secret antagonism between the line and colour. In his earlier phase, his engravings are influenced by Surrealism.

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne V

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Ferdinand Springer, Mythe de la Caverne VI

Engraving with aquatint, 1948

Ferdinand Springer was interned in the French concentration camp at Tuileries des Milles in 1939 alongside Ernst, Bellmer, and Wols. Freed in 1940 he joined Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay and Albert Magnelli in Grasse where they formed the Grasse Group. Springer succeeded in emigrating to Switzerland in 1942; in 1945 he returned to France. Ferdinand Springer subsquently became a French citizen. His work is in over 40 museums worldwide. He died in Grasse in 1998.