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I�ve posted before about some of the great names of twentieth-century French engraving�Jean-�mile Laboureur, Henri-Georges Adam, Ferdinand Springer. And there are more to come, such as Pierre Guastalla, the founder of La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine. Today I want to look at the man who, in my view, took the art of engraving to its dizziest heights, Roger Vieillard, born in Le Mans in 1907. Roger Vieillard, �conomie dirig�e Engraving, 1934 Gu�rin & Rault 11 (state v/v) Vieillard devoted himself to the engraved line almost from the moment he entered Stanley Hayter�s famed Atelier 17 in 1934. He soon established himself as a master of copper engraving, specializing particularly in surreal mythological/architectural scenes, realized with great fluidity and imbued with a sense of mystery. He believed that engraving was capable of effects impossible to achieve in drawing or painting. The Surrealist atmosphere that prevailed at Atelier 17 in the 1930s is thoroughly ebedded in Vieillard�s w

Henri-Georges Adam was born in 1904 in Paris, where his father was a jeweller and goldsmith in the Marais district. Adam worked in his father's studio while taking art classes in the evening, before entering the �cole des Beaux-Arts.  Henri-Georges Adam, Untitled, 1957 Engraving included in the 500 copies of Adam, Oeuvre Grav� Initially working as a painter, in the early 1930s, following an accident, Henri-Georges Adam changed direction. He took up engraving (the rudiments of which he had learned from his father), and abandoned painting for sculpture. He also designed monumental tapestries, always in shades of black and white.  Henri-Georges Adam, Le Christ aux Oliviers Engraving, 1947 As a printmaker, Henri-Georges Adam also insisted on the purity of black and white, and only used one tool, the engraver's burin. An anarchist and a pacifist, Henri-Georges Adam first distinguished himself as an engraver with a series of prints expressing his outrage at the Spanish Civil War,