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Richard Claude Ziemann: Exhibit at the New Britain Museum

If your knowledge of etching is confined to that classic toy, Etch A Sketch, then the Chester Parks & Recreation Department is creating an opportunity to widen your artistic horizons.

On Wednesday, April 3, Chester Parks & Rec is sponsoring a bus trip to an exhibit at the New Britain Museum of American Art featuring the works of the most prominent maker of artistic etchings in the United States, longtime Chester resident Richard Claude Ziemann.

Richard credits fellow Chester resident Carol LeWitt with providing the impetus for the current show. LeWitt, who was once a publisher of prints herself, has long been a figure of note in the art world, along with her late husband, the pioneering conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.

“Richard is the greatest printmaker of the late 20th century,” Carol says. “He needed to have a big show, to have work seen, archived.”

According to Chester Parks & Rec Director Aaron Page, the idea for running a bus trip to the New Britain exhibit came from Chester resident Sosse Baker, who along with her late husband Jack, previously ran the Chester Gallery, which exhibits Ziemann’s work locally.

“The best ideas come from residents. As is my job as Park and Rec director, I said, ‘Yes, how can we make this happen together?’’’ Page recalls.

The exhibit, 22 works in all, is entitled, In Nature, and continues until Sunday, April 7.

Richard’s works feature scenes of the natural world, many in the Chester area. There are flowers, grasses, meadows, woodland vistas—all done in painstaking detail. And done from life. Richard often took the copper plate used to engrave the etching into the woods to work directly from nature.

“It’s instinctive, what I want. It depends on what I see, what I look at in nature,” he says.

Richard worked outdoors in all seasons, sometimes doing etchings of the same scene in different seasons.

“Spring is so delicate. Late fall is so complex,” he says.

On one occasion, a local resident saw Richard in his car slumped over the steering wheel and concluded that he must have died. Actually, Richard was bending with great concentration over the plate on which he was working.

The current exhibit is a one-of-a kind event because it has not only the prints for which Richard is known, but also paintings and drawings, as well. Richard’s son Jeremy, also an artist, believes that this is the first time a show has contained all three.

“Having paintings, prints, and drawings is unique,” he says.

New Britain Museum Curator Lisa Williams has vivid memories of coming to Chester, both to Richard’s house and to the Chester Gallery.

“It was a marvelous encounter,” Williams says. “His work has such detail. It is so nuanced, and it is very powerful to see in person.”

According to Williams, the Ziemann exhibit has been very well received.

“He has such an existing fan base in Connecticut,” she says

Nancy Pinney of the Chester Gallery framed all the works for the current show.

“It’s beautiful framing, all the same frames,” Richard says.

Now 91, Richard says the owners of galleries in New York and Washington that had exhibited his works have now died.

“Just like my doctors,” he adds.

Richard grew up in Buffalo, New York. His initial nature drawing started at a cabin that he and some high school friends rented in nearby Allegheny State Park.

“It was so reasonable. We cooked outside,” he remembers.

Richard earned both a BA and MA at Yale University and had his first work exhibited when he was 24 years old in a show at the Museum of Modern Art. He was surprised when it was accepted.

“Some of my teachers didn’t get in it,” he recalls.

In 1958, his last year at Yale, Richard won the grand prize at an art festival in Boston. Life Magazine did a story, posing him and another winning Yale student in their caps and gowns.

However, that Life picture and the accompanying story never made the magazine. A last-minute story on a then-current Washington scandal involving vicuna coats and expensive gifts from a New England industrialist that were accepted by, among others, President Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, knocked the Ziemann story out of the magazine.

Richard can no longer wander around the woods looking for subject as he once did.

“My pace is slower now,” he says.

During the pandemic, Richard started doing small pencil drawings of views from his windows.

“Amazing how complicated it can be,” he says.

Richard sometimes uses the eraser more than the pencil and says that he has rubbed it down to the nub so often that he comes close to making holes in the paper on which he is drawing.

Richard wants people to know that when they see his face peering through the window, he is not trying to pry into his neighbors’ business. He is doing what he has done for most of his life: art.

The bus trip to the New Britain Museum of American Art to see Richard Ziemann’s exhibit, In Nature, and explore the museum will take place on Wednesday, April 3 from 9 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Attendees will meet at the Route 9 commuter lot in Chester. The $40 fee, payable by credit card or check, includes bus transportation and a museum ticket. For lunch, sandwiches will be available for purchase at the museum cafe.

Registration information for the bus trip is available by visiting chester.recdesk.com and clicking on ‘Programs.’ For anyone having trouble registering online, contact Aaron Page at the Chester Parks & Recreation Department for assistance with manual registration. The deadline to register is Wednesday, March 27. The trip is open to residents of all towns, with a minimum of 15 participants and a maximum of 30 participants.