Botanica: Monotypes 2016-2020

Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini’s career has spanned over three decades, with his bright, textural visual vocabulary of flora and fauna taking many forms, from watercolor paintings to sculptural installation. Botanica: Monotypes 2016 – 2020 collects over three hundred images from Zerbini’s printmaking series into a gorgeous, large format and full color volume published by the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Monotypes are a form of printmaking where each print is one-of-a-kind and not reproducible en masse. Zerbini used a technique of gathering leaves, petals, roots and other plant matter to arrange on an inked plate, covering it with paper and running it through a printing press to imprint the character of the plants onto the inked sheet. The natural textures and forms printed in a high contrast, minimal color palette juxtapose the organic with the abstract, making the plant life feel ethereal and otherworldly, familiar but alien. Scattered throughout the book are white pages debossed with Zerbini’s images, which hearken the reader back to the process in which the prints came into being. Inspiring for both art and plant lovers alike, Botanica captures Brazilian botanicals in bold, rhythmic compositions.

•10.25″W x 1.5″D x 15.25″H

•poem and artwork by Luiz Zerbini
•text by Emanuele Coccia and Stefano Mancuso
•hardcover
•308 pages