Frontispice: Qui meurt quand la patrie est vivante qui serait vivant si la patrie etait morte (Who Dies When the Motherland is Alive? Who Will Live if the Motherland is Dead)

Pierre Roche, Frontispice: Qui meurt quand la patrie est vivante qui serait vivant si la patrie etait morte (Who Dies When the Motherland is Alive? Who Will Live if the Motherland is Dead)

Pierre Roche, artist

1855–1922

Frontispice: Qui meurt quand la patrie est vivante qui serait vivant si la patrie etait morte (Who Dies When the Motherland is Alive? Who Will Live if the Motherland is Dead), 1915

Portfolio/Series title: Médailles 1914–1915 (Medallions 1914–1915)

Where object was made: France

Material/technique: gypsograph

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 147 x 145 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 5 13/16 x 5 11/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 281 x 191 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 11 1/16 x 7 1/2 in

Credit line: Gift of Professor Eric Gustav Carlson

Accession number: 2014.2610.08

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Camouflage and Other Hidden Treasures from the Eric Gustav Carlson WWI Collection

In December 1915, the artist Pierre Roche published a portfolio of his experimental low-relief color prints (gypsographs) that repeat in composition and size the bronze medals he designed during the initial years of WWI. Titled simply Médailles 1914–1915 (Medals, 1914–1915), Roche’s album is remarkable for its melding of sculpture and printmaking and for its unprecedented use of gypsography, a technique that is generally associated with the elegant and organic forms of the Art Nouveau style rather than the iconography of war. Roche described his technique as a “Procedure by which one executes, inks and pulls prints on plaster: Because of the nature of the substance, one obtains with the GYPSOGRAPH a particular texture and great softness of modeling.”

Camouflage and Other Hidden Treasures from the Eric Gustav Carlson WWI Collection

In December 1915, the artist Pierre Roche published a portfolio of his experimental low-relief color prints (gypsographs) that repeat in composition and size the bronze medals he designed during the initial years of WWI. Titled simply Médailles 1914–1915 (Medals, 1914–1915), Roche’s album is remarkable for its melding of sculpture and printmaking and for its unprecedented use of gypsography, a technique that is generally associated with the elegant and organic forms of the Art Nouveau style rather than the iconography of war. Roche described his technique as
a “Procedure by which one executes, inks and pulls prints on plaster: Because of the nature of the substance, one obtains with the GYPSOGRAPH a particular texture and great softness of modeling.”