Martha Edelheit Limited Edition: Presenting The Tattooed Lady

We worked with Her Clique to produce a special, extremely limited print edition with artist Martha Edelheit. The print return of Edelheit's iconic Tattoed Lady from 1962 — with a twist: a brand new tattoo! The release of this edition follows Edelheit's showcase at the Jewish Museum and solo exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery.

We have helped to produce many print collaborations and editions with Her Clique, but this was the first instance where we worked directly with one of their artists to create something new. When we first met Edelheit, "Martie", she came in with a million questions about digital printing and editioning. This being the first digital edition she had done, it was important to her to have a hands-on understanding of the process.

At first, Martie wasn't sure what she wanted to do, but after some experimentation, she decided to reimagine the Tattooed Lady. We helped Martie conceptualize, plan, retouch, and painstakingly color-correct the finalized image file for this edition before we printed it. The final Tattoeed Lady was printed on Hahnemühle Sugar Cane, a new Natural Line paper we had just started experimenting with. This rag paper, made from 70% sugar cane fibers and 30% cotton, has a distinct sugar texture somewhat reminiscent to a cold press texture, however with a more organic and less regimented pattern. Its nice physical weight and warm paper tone really helped to push the blue background of the artwork. According to Martie, the when seen in real life, the original Tattooed Lady illuminates a whole room due to both its size but immeasurably vibrant blue background, and it was a goal of ours to ensure the same effect in this edition.

Painted more than 50 years ago, it's amazing how contemporary the subject matter of this painting feels today. We added a new tattoo to the figure, a drawing done from a recent picture of a frog Martie took in her garden in Sweden. The Tattooed Lady is available for purchase through Her Clique, with 25% of sales going to support Planned Parenthood, and 25% going towards Doctors Without Borders.

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Studio photographs taken by Brooklyn Editions Inc. Artwork courtesy of the artist, Martha Edelheit.