1946-2022

Eric Goldberg was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut into a family of artists. He studied at Parsons School of Design, The New School and NYU. He taught painting, printmaking and drawing at colleges and universities for over thirty years.

Eric’s work is held by many private, corporate, public collections and museums. Most recently a number of his works have been added to the collections of The National Museum of Fine Arts of The Republic of China, The Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan, The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and The Boston Athenaeum. Many of his works can be seen at The Old Print Shop in New York City.

Eric served on SAGA’s Council for several years and was a leading contributor to the vitality of our community. He dedicated countless hours towards sorting and organizing our historical materials; a critical step in the long process of transforming our office space into a gallery. Eric was the genius behind the alternate venue for our 2020 Members Exhibition; he dreamed that one up well before his vision became a reality during the pandemic. We will miss his warm and gentle spirit, yet cherish his gracious, generous leadership and friendship.

For SAGA and other organizations that carried his prints, Eric shared the following thoughts about his work:

I am an etcher. I draw on plates of copper with a needle of steel. Drawing has a tactile directness that connects the mind and the hand. It is a two-way connection where the drawing evokes thought and thought evokes drawing. An unintentional gesture of the hand can change the concept in a direction that the mind alone would not have traveled.

Etching on a copper plate is, by its very nature, a process with many steps from its beginning through its completion. It is a process that is well suited to my way of working. I am able to resolve a drawing that evolves as it develops. Values and forms, can be decided, resolved and executed during the drawing. As I work, the patterns, made from lines, cross lines and stipples become spontaneous. Patterns and values can be built and enhanced by the layering of successive etches. When the plate is inked and printed, the inverted image becomes an entity unto itself; the whole greater than the sum of its parts.