The art of Bert Menco
Original etchings and intaglio prints by Bert Menco. Explore the detail and imagination of his works on paper.
Twenty-seven plates, one for each letter, each inked by Bert’s own hand. A child of a family that survived the Holocaust, he returned again and again to the alphabet that carries memory. Here the letters become living creatures — playful, ancient, and unafraid. To own it is to keep a small library of his heart.
Two figures, one breath. Bert inked each colour onto the plate by hand, à la poupée, so no two impressions are ever alike. It is a tender, slightly mischievous meditation on how we belong to one another — the kind of quiet humour his friends still remember him for.
Balance, as Bert understood it, was never still. Light leans into dark, laughter into sorrow. Inked colour by colour by his own hand, this print holds the scientist’s curiosity and the artist’s tenderness in one small, perfect circle.
Made in 1996, in the years he lived between laboratory and studio, this etching asks who pulls the strings. Its figures are bewildered yet defiant — a reminder that Bert never stopped questioning the forces that move us. Each colour was laid by hand; each impression is its own.
Twenty-five plates. Two ancient figures, long set against each other in stone, meet here as equals. For a man whose family carried the weight of history, this was a work of reconciliation — patient, luminous, and deeply personal. A print of rare ambition, made to be lived with.
Among the last plates Bert ever made, in 2025 — the year his life ended. Three regal figures stand together, dignified and watchful, as if guarding the world he left behind. There will be no more. To hold this impression is to hold one of his final words.
A single question, asked with a raised eyebrow and a smile. That was Bert: the colourful clothes, the humour, the gentle refusal to accept easy answers. Inked by hand, this etching invites you to keep asking — long after the conversation has ended.
Twenty-three plates bring the puppet of Russian folklore to life — the clown who longs to be loved. Bert felt deeply for the outsider, the one who is laughed at yet feels everything. This is one of his most intricate prints, and one of his most tender.
Two myths of struggle and gaze, folded into one. Bert drew on the great stories of antiquity the way others draw on breath, and gave them back to us with colour inked by his own hand. Powerful, haunting, and unmistakably his.
The Egyptian cat goddess, protector of home and joy. Bert gave her a knowing look and a soft, watchful grace. Inked by hand, colour by colour, she becomes a guardian for the home she enters — just as he hoped his art would be.
The leap of death — the acrobat’s somersault with no net below. Bert knew that every act of creation is such a leap. Graceful, daring and slightly absurd, this print captures the courage behind his whole life’s work.
What we lose, we lose forever. Bert the scientist knew it; Bert the artist mourned it. This 1999 etching is both elegy and warning, its creatures rendered with a tenderness that makes their absence felt. Today, its title carries a second, quieter meaning.