Barockes Welttheater (Daniel Pfisterer’s Baroque World Theater) #113

German-born artist Linda Schwarz is acclaimed for her experimental printmaking practice. For this work, part of a series of related prints, Schwarz selected imagery from Daniel Pfisterer’s manuscript codex Barockes Welttheater: Ein Buch von Menschen, Tieren, Blumen, Gewachsen und Allerley Binfalien (Baroque World Theater: A book of people, animals, flowers, garden plants, and sundry impressions), completed in 1727. The original manuscript page features hand-drawn flowers and plants, along with brief handwritten descriptions. Schwarz re-printed the appropriated page in black-and-white using transfer lithography and Xerox printing, and then overpainted the images in various colored ink washes. Schwarz’s conceptual adaptations seamlessly merge form and content, transforming an 18th-century manuscript page into a compelling work of contemporary art.