Engraver David Silverberg
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Canada’s foremost engraver, David Silverberg, deserves a very long introduction. With a career spanning more than 50 years, his 2013 retrospective at the McCain Art Gallery in Florenceville NB is, by his count, his 222nd solo show.
A Montréalais by birth, he moved to Paris in 1957 to study printmaking after graduation from McGill University. By 1984, he had been appointed to the prestigious Royal Canadian Academy and then, in 1986, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London.
The artist has travelled, worked and studied in at least 100 countries, most often by invitation. After teaching his colour technique in Japan in the mid-1960s, for instance, Silverberg was invited by the Chinese government to work, teach and exhibit there ─ twice.
Silverberg’s New Brunswick connection began in 1963 when he moved here to teach printmaking for a year at Mount Allison University in Sackville; to his own surprise, he stayed for more than three decades. In 1993, working to a gigantic scale, he designed and produced the 40-by-20-foot backdrops for the DancEast Moncton production of The Nutcracker. After retirement, he was invited to become Acadia University’s first artist-in-residence (a five-year stint) and he still lives in Wolfville, NS where he works daily in his studio.
His highly detailed, colourful engravings are created using the traditional “burin” technique, a process dating back at least six centuries in which a sharp, pointed cutting tool is used to engrave images directly onto a steel plate. See Silverberg at work and learn more about this technique on YouTube.
I understand that you were a pupil of the noted Group of Seven artist, Arthur Lismer, when you were just a boy in Montréal.
Yes, I was six years old and the Art Association of Montréal offered children’s classes led by Lismer at the Museum of Fine Arts. Lismer as a teacher was magic, and contact with him also meant that we kids had access to virtually all the artists he knew. After I finished high school, he invited me to Mexico to study but my parents refused. They said “David can paint here on Sundays.” Later, I decided to go to McGill for a four-year course under Lismer, but he got kicked out.
But you did get a degree and became a geologist. What happened next?
I was working in the gold fields of northern Quebec, near Rouyn, making a lot of money. One day my boss gave me a magazine with an article about William Hayter [1901-1988] who was also a geologist. The story was about him quitting his job and becoming an engraver in Paris. That gave me pause. I had always wanted to be an artist but I needed something to push me over the brink. So I sent him a letter asking if I could come and study at his Atelier 17. He replied saying “yes, delighted, $200 a year” and my future was decided.
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Titled L’enfant malade, this tender piece portrays
Silverberg’s daughter-in-law with her child.
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I didn't tell my parents that I was leaving until the taxi arrived. But I thought, being in Paris, I’m going to meet the big guys. They were all there. Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Picasso. This was 1957 and it was a rich time, an important period. There was this modern art thing happening, a rejection of what had been done before the war. But Hayter, a surrealist, loved engraving even when no one else wanted to do it. He didn't abandon tradition, the old way of doing it, but he did re-invent it. He took the ancient bruni method to a wildly modern level.
You came back to Canada in 1960.
Yes. Arthur Lismer once again entered my life by including me in one of his shows at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal. There was a concurrent van Gogh exhibition. The crowds ─ thousands of people ─ that had come to view van Gogh and Lismer also saw the work of a virtually unknown printmaker. That made my career.
You’re known for your delicate yet colourful artwork. Someone at last night’s preview was wondering how the colours are applied. Is it a multi-stage process?
I use Hayter’s method, basically, which gives me the freedom that others have with painting. I mix my own colours and rub the inks onto the engraved plate. What’s special is that I use just one plate. That’s why they brought me to Japan to teach. Variations in the etching allow for variations in the depth of the several different colours with just one pass.
As a teacher, what message might you pass along to younger artists?
If you really want to make it in art, leave the country. Go where there’s a tradition of celebrating art and artists. We’re still too young a country for that.
Anything else?
To be great, an artist needs to have strong determination. But it’s not just about hard work and perseverance, luck plays a part too.
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This complex engraving, The Prague Haggadah, references the book that Jews read on the first night of Passover. It took over a year to complete. Silverberg says that the fictional story depicted here is based on a Hebrew text that he discovered in Prague. He imagined a story dealing with ancient scrolls gathered by Nazis during the last World War. The three men here have dedicated their lives to restoring the seized works and one is so involved that he is working upside down without realizing it.
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