Stefan Achilles, like his father before him, was an iron worker and machinist at Coulter & McKenzie, Inc, in Bridgeport CT. Sometime during the late 1940’s, he rescued a large, clunky, “etching press”, as he called it, from the company garbage heap, and stored it in his backyard shed that served as his studio. He knew that some day it, perhaps, may serve a purpose. In 1958 Achilles, under the encouragement of Pavia, and possibly other Club members, starts exploring abstract expressionism. He tells us, in a diary entry, that this was a transformative year in his development as an artist. Unlike Pollock or Rothko or Kline, his work was not on massive canvasses with paint but, on a much smaller scale, using sumi ink on paper. He boasts, in a letter to Pavia, his lifelong friend, that he plans to be a great sumi-e artist. Pavia published two of his ink drawings in It Is Magazine (1959).
During the following year, Achilles, an avid experimenter, started using his “etching press” in the creation of monoprints, unique, one of a kind images. He was not only experimenting with metal plates and different types of inks, but glass plates, as well! His Quarry Series pulled from glass plates (in vitro), depict what seems to be barren, eerie, rocklike formations, suspended in space. These prints may possibly be some of the earliest examples of the monoprint in abstract expressionism. These prints are from 1959, on paper (3’X4′), using various sumi inks (Achilles was especially fond of Kaimei):
Stefan Achilles (1905-1990) 