87. Elaine Stevens

In 1946, Elaine Stevens made at least two prints at Atelier 17, which were once in the collection of Stanley William Hayter. In the first, Nude on the Desert, a stylized nude lays across the print’s lower margin—simultaneously shown from behind and in profile—and looks, rather uninterestedly, at a pyramid form and bird flying overhead. The flowing curves of the nude’s body and the dark shadows under her body reveal Stevens’s skill with the burin. The totally abstract Stellar Landscape, by contrast, features heavy, dark lines, which come from the artist etching the plate deeply in acid. Taken together, the prints invite the question of what else this talented artist might have accomplished as a printmaker. Unfortunately, nothing further is known about Stevens’s life or artistic career, if she pursued one professionally.