Phrygian
2012
Martin Puryear American, born 1941
United States
Puryear has used several works to explore the shape of the Phrygian cap, a symbol of liberty popularized by the French Revolution. While he was familiar with the numerous depictions of the cap, it was only after he began the sculpture Big Phrygian, in 2014, that he came across an early engraving of a black man wearing one. Dating to 1794, the year that slavery was abolished in France, the image depicts a freed slave with the caption Moi libre aussi (I am free too).
Soft ground etching, spit-bite, drypoint and aquatint in black and gray on cream wove paper, laid down on white wove paper (chine collé)