Exquisite monotypes celebrating the beauty of plants by transforming them into inky abstractions

Though he has engaged with a variety of mediums―watercolor, photography, sculpture―Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini (born 1959) has devoted the past several years to the creation of monotypes. He selects leaves, flowers and branches for their distinctive shapes and textures and places them on an inked metal plate. He then lays a large sheet of paper over the plate so that the botanical compositions are transferred onto the page. The result is a large-scale monotype print that immerses the viewer in the minute details of a plant’s anatomy.

High contrast, with a minimal palette of browns, blacks and greens, these images blur the distinction between figuration and abstraction. Over the past four years, the artist has created more than 300 monotypes in this style, working from within major museum institutions in Brazil. Now, Zerbini has collaborated with the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain to collect the entire series in a single large-format volume. In these images, readers can appreciate his dedication to both the craft of printmaking and the preservation of the world’s natural beauty in unexpected ways.