GESSO  A white ground material for preparing rigid supports for painting. made of a mixture of chalk, white pigment, and glue. Same name applied to acrylic bound chalk and pigment used on flexible supports as well as rigid.

FORGING  Shaping metal with hammers while it is hot; the method for making wrought iron.

BAUHAUS  A design school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany. The Bauhaus attempted to achieve reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands of industrial mass production. Artists include Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger.

BAS RELIEF  Sculpture in which figures project only slightly from a background, as on a coin. Also known as low relief sculpture.

AVANT-GARDE  A group active in the invention and application of new ideas and techniques in an original or experimental way. A group of practitioners and/or advocates of a new art form may also be called avant-garde. Some avant-garde works are intended to shock those who are accustomed to traditional, established styles.

ARTIST'S PROOF  An Artist's Proof is one outside the regular edition. By custom, the artist retains the A/Ps for his personal use or sale.

ETCHING  The technique of reproducing a design by coating a metal plate with wax and drawing with a sharp instrument called a stylus through the wax down to the metal. The plate is put in an acid bath, which eats away the incised lines; it is then heated to dissolve the wax and finally inked and printed on paper. The resulting print is called the etching.

ART NOUVEAU  An art style of the late 1800's featuring curving, often swirling shapes based on organic forms.

FIGURE - GROUND  In two-dimensional art, the relationship between the principal forms and the background. Figure-ground ambiguity suggests equal importance for the two.

Aquatint

AQUATINT  A print produced by the same technique as an etching, except that the areas between the etched lines are covered with a powdered resin that protects the surface from the biting process of the acid bath. The granular appearance that results in the print aims at approximating the effects and gray tonalities of a watercolor drawing.