The traditional craft of printmaking has been listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2018. As a historically male-dominated practice, the few women who... Read More
The traditional craft of printmaking has been listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2018. As a historically male-dominated practice, the few women who found a pale place in the art historical canon were often daughters of master printers. A detail akin to both Newmen’s own biography and that of Elisabetta Sirani – an Italian Baroque printmaker who died in unexplained circumstances at the age of 27.
The Elisabetta series consists of 8 works accompanying the character in various stages of her life. The portraits insist on the authorship, autonomy, (self-)representation, and subjectivity of Elisabetta: stubborn, defying the male gaze’s ideals of beauty and grace; she appears rebellious or vulnerable, at times marked by age or exhaustion, at times demonstratively self-assured in their appearance.
Newmen's portraits dive back into the life's of figures who have been structurally excluded or underrepresented in art history while honoring their inventive strategies. Respecting the individuality of her subjects, Newmen abandons the serial language characteristic of intaglio printmaking by employing painterly elements of monotype. The results are not editions, but a series of individual works.