Spool Formation (working proof)

“[...] The true art lover is not he who is interested solely ill the finished work, but one who is interested in the path which the artist traveled in order to arrive at the definitive work, at the definitive expression. In the procedures of print-making, with few exceptions, this trajectory is enormously marked by the printer's successive impressions throughout the work's various stages. In the language of the metier, these copies are called states. In no other technique is it possible to permanently and originally record the progress of this creative effort which makes me say that a painting is a battlefield. In oil painting, the final coat of color cancels everything, hides beneath its thickness the scaffolding that supports the structure. Nothing remains of this painful preparation, nothing visible remains, nothing hints at the subsoil of the finished work. The mutations of an oil painting disappear irremediably and it is only possible to record it, but never as authentically and as originally as in print-making.
In a print everything is recorded in the printed copy. Afterwards, the artist proceeds with his work, the plate is transformed, it no longer exists, it was, yet is no longer, or is only in part. The end is always preceded by a becoming. One easily understands why these states arouse the interest of collectors. To confront the studies of a print is to see the birth of the work.The plate or engraved wood represents the matrix, but which, as may be seen, does not diminish the originality of the copies which are original and not replicas as one might erroneously imagine. The printed copy is the work, for the matrix only possesses an aesthetic existence after it has been printed. I reiterate my appeal that plates not be destroyed, as some are in order to make copies rare. I consider that to do so is a lesson in destruction.... let us ensure the permanence of our artistic production by all means possible.”
Mônica Zielinsky, Iberê Camargo: catálogo raisonné (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006), 72-73. (Words by Iberê Camargo).