Samuel Maitin, Parts and Counterparts: Embrace

The bodies of a man and woman tenderly intertwine and embrace in this sensual print. Maitin inked cardboard and textural papers in a warm sepia tone, cut them into shapes, and assembled them together like marionettes. His collotypes of this time coincide with his collaboration with French artist Jean Dubuffet, for whom he designed a book, The Lithographs of Jean Dubuffet, in 1964. Their rawness evokes Dubuffet’s concept of art brut—raw art made outside the tradition of fine art dominated by academic training. Dubuffet and Maitin both valued the pure expression of a vision or emotion.