Eugenio Dittborn

7th History of the Human Face (the Scenery of the Sky), Airmail Painting No. 7

Since 1984, Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn has been making works that he calls Airmail Paintings. They are constructed collages made of cheap, lightweight materials: photocopied images and text, culled from a wide variety of sources, sewn onto clothes-lining fabric, sometimes with the addition of printed or painted marks and messages.

Taciturna

In these new paintings, his use of tincture, (as opposed to paint) has enabled him to explore the alchemic aspects of painting. The tincture, a dye-like substance, provides a more mobile, translucent means to achieve transmutation of images drawn from cartoons, old engravings, and drawings from how-to-draw books. The fluidity of the tincture, combined with the printed images, appliquéd satin fragments and embroidery result in complex combinations and interpretations.

Works in the MOMA collection