Home > Juan Sánchez > Wildwood Press > Rosa
Rosa by Juan Sánchez

Rosa

Juan Sánchez

Artwork details

Title
Rosa
Description

 

Collagraph/Photolithograph/Chine Colle/ Handcoloring

on Handmade Paper

48”h x 48”w

Edition Various of 16 2007

 

 

Rosa Luxemberg b. 1871- Polish by birth, a German by

marriage and a Socialist and activist who was imprisoned

because of her opposition to the German government at

the outbreak of World War I. Following Germany's defeat

and less than a year after she was released from prison,

she and Karl Liebknecht were arrested and murdered by

German troops in 1919. Karl Liebknecht was memorialized

in Kathe Kollwitz' iconic woodcut Memorial for Karl Liebknecht.

 

"Thrice handicapped -- a woman, a Pole, and a Jew -- Luxemburg

was the most eloquent voice of the left wing of German Social

Democracy, the defender of Marxist purity against all comers,

and a constant advocate of radical action." Unkown

 

Juan Sanchez came to the studio in St. Louis to make the

plates, and to proof the first round of images. He arrived

with a copy of the only photograph of Rosa after she was

pulled from the river following her assassination.  The

gruesome image of her deteriorating skull became the

abstracted images deep in the background. The Star of

David with a photograph of Rosa, age nine, is surrounded

by images of a baby (Juan's daughter Liora). Below are

two outstretched arms - Lifeless? In repose? Angelic?

 

All of the paper was handmade at Wildwood Press save the

BFK used for the images of the baby. The base paper is a

blue kozo paper dappled with water drops backed with black linen.

 

Date
2007
Edition
Edition Various of 16
Signature
Signed
Image
48 x48 inches
Sheet
48 x48 inches
Status
Available
Price
Price on request
The Artist

Juan Sánchez

Born in 1954 to immigrant working-class Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York, Juan Sánchez is one of the most significant Nuyorican visual artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Sánchez emerged as a central figure within a generation of artists using diverse media to explore ethnic, racial, and national identity as well as social justice in the 1980s and 90s. While Sánchez first gained recognition for his large multi-layered mixed-media collage paintings addressing issues of Puerto Rican identity and colonisation, his innovative oeuvre has expanded in terms of both medium and thematics; Sánchez now alludes to international subjects – including U.S. interventions abroad, apartheid, and nuclear disarmament – in addition to local and personal interests, through painting, photography, printmaking, and video.

Read more

More Juan Sánchez prints at Wildwood Press