Guy Diehl
Figure by the Pool (Sue), 2016/1975
etching with acrylic
5.75 x 11.75 inches (paper 11 x 15 inches)
edition of 20

Guy Diehl’s 1975/2016 etching Figure by the Pool (Sue) was printed from a zinc plate inscribed by the artist during his days as a graduate student at SFAI in the mid-1970s. Depicting the artist’s then-girlfriend lounging poolside at a friend’s suburban residence, Sue evokes a carefree, sun-drenched lifestyle reminiscent of fellow Californians Richard Diebenkorn and David Hockney. Diehl found the plate at home this year and brought it to Magnolia Editions, where it still held ink and printed as smoothly as when he first issued Sue in a small edition of eight prints in 1975. When Magnolia’s Donald Farnsworth suggested that Sue receive a contemporary update, Diehl and Farnsworth used an innovative technique, perfected in previous Diehl editions, to overlay the black ink of the artist’s intaglio etching with a layer of precisely registered opaque acrylic color.