El exterminio

“El exterminio” (“The Extermination”) (2018), 20 x 20 cm, is a woodblock engraving made from 8 end-grain cuts of palo blanco, made the same year as “La sequía,” using the same demanding multi-block technique.

← Previous engraving                     🇪🇸 Ver en español                             → Next engraving

Materials

Carved from 8 separate end-grain blocks of palo blanco, then assembled and printed as a single image — a technique Kopp used across several of his early small-format engravings, before turning to larger single woodblocks and, later, plastic sheets for pieces such as “Aún quedan” (2025).

Themes

The title strikes a harsher note than most of Kopp’s later, more ambiguous ecological imagery: a direct statement on extermination, made a few years before the artist turned to the more layered, self-portrait-inflected treatment of environmental collapse in “La esperanza” (2021) and “Aún quedan” (2025).

Together with "El fumigador (Maíz)" and "Fumigados," it completes Kopp's sustained look at crop spraying and the loss of species along the Santa Fe litoral — the gas-masked fumigator and the dead wildlife scattered across the ground speak directly to that concern.

Catalog

“El exterminio” is part of Kopp’s early miniprint-format engravings, alongside “La sequía” (2018), both worked in the 8-block end-grain technique. As with the rest of the collection, technique and dimensions can be confirmed directly with the artist.

La matriz

Fotografía de la matriz de madera original utilizada para imprimir "El exterminio".