The Road 1961

Sid Hammer’s ‘The Road’ from 1961 is an etching, and it feels like a conversation between the hand, the plate, and the acid. I can imagine Hammer bent over the plate, making marks, wiping it down, and then re-immersing it in acid. There’s a struggle here, a dance between control and accident, with the artist as choreographer. The architecture looms in these dark, dense verticals, but the white space is also important: it’s atmospheric, and it gives the whole thing room to breathe. The road itself is just a slash of light, pulling you into the depths of the image. The lines are rough, urgent, and it makes me think of Piranesi and his dark visions of architectural space. It’s not just about the road; it's about the feeling of being dwarfed by these monstrous structures. What a great print! These dark, dense lines keep the conversation going, from one artist to another, from one era to the next.