La sequía

“La sequía” (“The Drought”) (2018), 20 x 20 cm, is a woodblock engraving made from 8 end-grain cuts of palo blanco, using the same demanding multi-block technique Kopp used the same year for “El exterminio” and, a year earlier, for “La inundación” (2017).

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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

As its title indicates, the piece takes on drought — one of the recurring ecological concerns, alongside agrochemicals and burnings, that Kopp would return to explicitly a few years later in “La esperanza” (2021).

The image shows the Paraná river almost dry and the Rosario–Victoria bridge in ruins, quoting Bigatti's sculpture and the dead cow from Santiago Minturn Zerva's 1940s Rosario engravings — a local graphic tradition Kopp was reclaiming. For Kopp, this piece marked a turning point: his engravings stopped being mere "resignifications" of borrowed imagery and became, in his own words, Resignaciones — a title that plays on the Spanish resignar (to resign oneself) and nación (nation).

Catalog

“La sequía” is part of Kopp’s early miniprint-format engravings, alongside “El exterminio” (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 "La sequía".