A hand with a crayon scribbles a spectrum of colors ranging from yellow through shades of orange into different shades of green and brown. We then dissolve into the same range of colors within a Connecticut landscape. Later on in the film, tall stalks of marsh grass dissolve into the ink-stained patterns of a long plank of wood, which dissolve again into a parallel line of tools that will be used to cut into other planks of wood to make the prints for which Antonio Frasconi has become so well-known.
In this way, in this film, Pablo Frasconi visually demonstrates how his father derives his colors and shapes from the colors and shapes of the world that surrounds him. As we see Antonio Frasconi meticulously painting a flock of birds in flight in preparation for his cutting we see how he honors the natural grain of the wood, “a surface which is alive,” as he puts it --using his tools as naturally as possible to bring out the shapes that are already there, as extensions (to quote Frasconi again) “of your arms, of your fingers.”
Peter Harcourt, author
“Six European Directors”
