Krishna Reddy, working with fellow ex-pat artist, Kaiko Moti made a radical discovery at Atelier 17 (in Paris) in 1952. While rolling out ink on a glass palette, they inadvertently spread the pigment across a surface containing an unnoticed drop of oil. To their surprise, the oil resisted the ink, leaving a clear patch on the glass. This simple accident sparked a profound insight: by manipulating the viscosity of inks—that is, the ratio of pigments to oil—up to 3 colors may be rolled onto a single plate and printed simultaneously without blending into mud tones. Instead of printing one color at a time from separate plates, artists could now apply multiple colors to a single matrix, exploiting the physical resistance between oily and less oily inks.
This innovation became known as color viscosity printing, or simultaneous color printing. It allowed for richly layered, multi-hued prints created in a single pass through the press—an extraordinary leap forward in the field of intaglio printmaking.
Although Stanley William Hayter, founder of Atelier 17 is often credited with the discovery—and to some degree rightly so given his pioneering work and the collaborative spirit of Atelier 17—the full story is more nuanced. In 1946, Hayter, along with Fred Becker, Gabor Peterdi, Ellen Abbey Countey, and James Goetz, developed an early method for achieving multiple colors in a single print. Their technique, first demonstrated in the print Cinq Personnages, used stencil methods to apply different colors to the surface of an inked intaglio plate. By altering the viscosity of each ink using varying amounts of oil, they found that colors could overlap without mixing uncontrollably. Where the stenciled areas intersected, the semi-transparent inks created new tones and depth, activated by the reflected light from the white paper beneath.
Reddy’s contribution extended these early experiments. Rather than stenciling colors onto the surface, he developed a method for rolling inks of different viscosities directly onto the plate using hard and soft rollers. A “thinned ink” (with higher viscosity) would adhere to the lower recessed areas, while an ink with less oil would resist the first, settling only on the raised plate surfaces. The result was a vibrant, complex image—printed in a single impression—where color separation and interaction occurred through mechanical and chemical means, not just optical blending.
This technique also introduced a curious byproduct—the counterproof, as inks remaining on the roller after application could be transferred to a second plate and printed in reverse, creating complementary images and expanding the creative potential of each inking of a plate.
Reddy’s innovation at Atelier 17 helped redefine the possibilities of color in printmaking. His work not only advanced technical boundaries but also opened an avenue to new conceptual approaches for generations of artists to come.
We are honored and delighted to share a superb selection of Krishna Reddy’s color viscosity prints. We’ve selected impressions that demonstrate the range of possibilities inherent with modulating the viscous nature of color inks. Each etched, engraved and burnished plate serves as an armature for exploring alternative expressive color options. Krishna’s discovery served him well and enabled him to experiment with color throughout his distinguished career. In some instances he reverses the sequence of inks as they are applied to the plate. In others, color choices are pushed to extremes as he sought optimal expression. In each case Krishna found more to say and his practice became one of endless discovery. We are served well by Krishna generosity as he willingly shared the wisdom inherent in his invention.
