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Reflecting the exhibition “Le Graveur et les sortilèges,” devoted to the worlds, figures, and visions of Danish artist Lars Bo, “La Fabrique de la gravure” offers a shift in perspective.
Reflecting the exhibition “Le Graveur et les sortilèges,” devoted to the worlds, figures, and visions of Lars Bo, “La Fabrique de la gravure” offers a shift in perspective. The aim is no longer only to consider what engraving lets us see, but also how it comes into being. This parallel exhibition therefore invites visitors into the Danish artist’s studio and lets them follow, step by step, the genesis of an engraved image. Engraving is often perceived as an outcome: the print, the image printed and circulated. Yet it is, above all, a process made up of trials, revisions, and patient gestures carried out with specific tools. The aim of this exhibition is therefore to break down the major stages of Lars Bo’s work: from the first draft to work on the copper plate, from the engraver’s tools to inking, up to the decisive moment of printing. The objects on display (sketches, plates, tools, proofs) come directly from the artist’s studio and are on loan from Ludmilla Balfour‑Hess and Miranda Roux, the artist’s daughters, and Titania Hess, his granddaughter, to whom the bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève once again wishes to express its deepest thanks. Their trust makes it possible to show the artist’s work from a rarely adopted point of view. The route highlights the deeply artisanal dimension of the work of the author of Taille douce : un conte d’imprimeur. An engraver in the fullest sense of the word, Lars Bo had an intimate relationship with materials: copper, bitten into and then reworked; ink, spread and then wiped away; paper, chosen and pressed. Each stage of the engraving process involves aesthetic as well as technical choices, in which chance plays a fundamental role. Even though the artist shows a unique mastery of engraving techniques and processes, the print is never synonymous with total, disembodied, inescapable control. Rather, engraving is built through a constant, sometimes difficult dialogue between intention and the artist’s gesture on the one hand, and the resistance of the material on the other. By revealing what goes on behind the scenes of creation, “La Fabrique de la gravure” does not seek to dispel the mystery of Lars Bo’s images, but on the contrary to focus attention on what gives rise to them. The marvelous, the unsettling, and the fantastical do not arise solely from the artist’s imagination: they take shape in the speed of the first quick sketches, in the patient preparatory trials, in the slow work on the plate, in the repetition of gestures, and in the acceptance of chance. By presenting what precedes the engraved image, what makes it possible and what, humbly and silently, continues to inhabit it, we are given the chance to observe the emergence of a work of art “that moves and [is] captured at the very moment when it still seems to be moving,” to borrow Julien Gracq’s phrase about literature in En lisant en écrivant. Through this immersion in the studio, visitors are invited to consider engraving not as a simple technique of printing and reproduction, but as an art of transformation, in which the visible is the result of a long and demanding process of making. Exhibition “Le Graveur et les sortilèges”: immerse yourself in the work of Lars Bo! Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève - 10, place du Panthéon, Paris 5e From Friday, April 17, 2026 to Saturday, July 11, 2026 Discover the artist’s work in a major exhibition in the hall of the bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. View the event
Source: paris.fr — photo: Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève