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Roger PLATIEL

Born in Paris in 1934, to parents fleeing Germany and the rise of Hitler, Roger Platiel's (1934-1978) childhood was marked by the insecurity of constant movement, as they fled France for Denmark, then to England, and finally to Switzerland. This rootlessness left him with, as one friend/biographer put it, "an irreconcilable memory." His printmaking career began in 1952 while studying art at the Werkakademie Kassel (today known as Werkakademie für Gestaltung Kassel), where he discovered his lifelong attraction to the engraving process. From 1956 to 1958, he spent two formative years worked with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris. He traveled extensively, throughout Asia, across the United States, living in Rome from 1966-1967, and then in Africa from 1968-1970. From 1970 on, he remained in Paris, exhibiting, and printing his distinctive, poetic, colorful engravings. Before a brain tumor tragically ended his life in 1978, he created nearly 200 plates from 1956 to 1978. Three months before his death, he completed a plate titled Trace, the last of his intense, distinctive body of work. His engravings were exhibited for the first time in a posthumous show in 1979. The power of his art endures, as nearly 40 years later "The Complete Works of Roger Platiel" was published in 2017.