Painting: Color Aquatint; Signed Ana Maria Pacheco, "Proof II"

A thin red thread drops out of the dark into a basket heaped with small green faces.

Proof II is a color aquatint signed by Ana Maria Pacheco, born 1943, from Brazil, made around 1979. Aquatint is an etching technique that bites tone, rather than line, into a metal plate, which is how it produces such deep, velvety darks. Here a near-black ground fills most of the image. A copper-brown basket or sack catches the light, filled with green heads or fruit that turn out, on a second look, to have features. The red line falls straight down into them and spreads into a stain. Pencil notations sit beneath the plate mark on a wide cream sheet.

Still life, but only just.