Spring 1980: Peter Milton: Drawing Toward Etching will be on view at The Brooklyn Museum March 22 through May 4. In the catalogue to the exhibition, Consulting Curator of Prints and Drawings Gene Baro writes:
“Peter Milton is among the finest of contemporary etchers. Working in the seemingly severe mode of black and white, he has produced the most delicate and subtle effects; tones like tissues and incandescent inflections of light, blackness at once solid and velvet-like. The sensuality of Milton’s textures conforms exactly to the spirit of his images, which are evocative and mysterious - - incidents of an ongoing reverie, which itself encompasses landscape and interior, person, creature, and object, bound together like planets and constellations in their courses.
Milton has evolved his draftsmanship essentially to serve etching. But some years ago, he abandoned drawing directly on the plate for the greater freedom of drawing on plastic for transfer. This shift allows us for the first time to study his method and to see some of his major prints at several stages of preparation. We can now acknowledge the intrinsic interest of Milton’s drawings, their power to move us in themselves -- a revelation, perhaps, of things to come.”
Milton is a master of the technical complexities of etching. A command of the medium is conveyed in the richness of his prints, which embody a spirit more akin to painting than to conventional printmaking. Milton has chosen to work exclusively in black and white and has developed a distinctive control of texture for his extraordinary and imaginative subjects. Along with the prints themselves, this exhibition offers a unique series of the preliminary drawings for the etching plates, as well as more recent drawings made as individual works independent of etching. Many of these rare and fragile drawings have never been exhibited before.
The 20-page catalogue ($2.00, 6 3/4 X 9 inches), containing 12 illustrations and an introduction and interview with the artist by Gene Baro will be available March 21, 1980.
The exhibition has been organized by Gene Baro with the assistance of Ripley Albright, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1980, 007-8.
