Espoir I (Hope I) is the first in a series, suggesting Hasegawa returned to this theme across multiple plates, refining or varying his formal approach. The title implies an upward or expansive orientation—an aspiration encoded in composition—which Hasegawa may have realized through marks that rise from the lower portion of the plate or through a palette of warm, lightly saturated color that reads as illuminated rather than shadowed. The Roman numeral designation indicates that Hasegawa treated the theme systematically, likely preserving continuity of certain formal elements across iterations while shifting palette, density, or mark arrangement. In color etching, such series allow an artist to explore the same emotional territory through different chromatic and textural relationships by re-biting, re-aquatinting, or re-inking the plate. The calligraphic marks characteristic of Hasegawa's work carry, in this context, an aspirational rather than introspective weight.
Espoir I was created by Shoichi Hasegawa (長谷川潔一).
Espoir I uses Etching, on etching.
Espoir I depicts calligraphy and abstract.
