Flayed bodies and a gaping skeletal mouth emerge from abstract forms in this heavily worked print by Cortor. The title, the French word for “slaughterhouse,” refers to a meat market that the artist visited while living in Haiti during a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949. While Cortor identified the market as his subject matter, it is tempting to read this blood-red print as a reference to violence against people. As a Black American, Cortor would have been all too aware of the systemic racism and government-sanctioned oppression still plaguing many citizens of a country that had ostensibly fought for freedom abroad for decades.

Gallery label from

2023

Medium Etching and aquatint
Dimensions plate (irreg.): 35 1/4 × 23 11/16" (89.5 × 60.2 cm); sheet: 44 3/16 × 29 15/16" (112.3 × 76 cm)
Publisher probablyEldzier Cortor, New York
Printer probablyEldzier Cortor, New York
Edition artist's proof; edition size unidentified
Credit The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Endowment for Prints
Object number 724.2019
Department Drawings and Prints

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