This is an etching and aquatint by the French printmaker Yannick Balif. It is an abstract, with vivid color fields of blue green and red orange on a dark background emphasized with bold streaks. It is an etching and aquatint and very characteristic of the artist's style. It utilizes thick ink to create a surface the gives the image some depth. It is pencil signed and dated lower right Y Balif 76. The edition is given in pencil lower left 59/70. The image is printed to the margin, which is typical of her etchings and is 22 x 30 inches. The print is in excellent condition. It is a good, crisp impression that is well-inked. There is no fading, staining, foxing, discoloration of other issues with the image. It is unframed. An excellent example of the artist's work.

Yannick Ballif (1927 - 2009) Yannick Ballif (or Balif as it is also spelled, in fact her signature varies between the two) is a French printmaker. She studied under groundbreaking printmaker Johnny Friedlander. While not a lot of biographical information is available, she is known to have taught at l'Ecole des Arts décoratifs de Paris in the 70s and 80s. Of interest, her given name is Mariannick Swinnen. While taking her husband’s surname, she phonetically contracted her first name to sign all her work.
The rich surface of her etchings captures the techniques that gives her etchings a three-dimensional nature. However, rather than emulating the stylized abstract style of Friedlander, Balif creates images that are evocative of the abstract expressionists with bold colors and gestural approaches to printmaking. Even though her works are very abstract, they are frequently representational with images of the shoreline being of particular note. She also incorporates geological features into her work. Her work is held in the Cabinet des Estamps of the Bibliotheque Nationale. While recognized as a extraordinary artist in her time, since her death she has slipped into relative obscurity. Fortunately, there is a good body of representative works that appear on the market at very affordable prices given the quality of the art.