Robert Kipniss Art

Landscape with Window and Chair Mezzotint on wove paper, 2000 Signed in pencil lower right (see photo) Edition: 150 (93/150) (see photo) Special Presentation Print for the Print Club of Albany, 2000 Condition: Mint Image/Plate size: 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches Sheet size: 7 x 5 1/2 inches From the Print Club of Albany: "Kipniss states that it is part of his working process to explore an image in pencil, in paint and in print. As the image evolves, its ramifications lead to hints of the next work. This image is well-suited for this medium since in mezzotint the artist literally draws the light as he burnishes the tiny rocked copper pinholes that trap the ink and become the image." From 1968 into 1990, Kipniss created lithographs that followed the style and content of his paintings, whether generally or specifically. A commission from a print publisher in 1968 for five editions of lithographs precipitated his adoption of lithography as a medium. Kipniss's first lithographs were done in black and white, but by 1970 he was also working in color. He taught himself "to lay in the most delicately light silvery tones on the surface of the limestone by maintaining an exceptionally sharp point on the lithographic pencil and drawing with no pressure other than the weight of the pencil itself." He built up a support so that his hand and wrist could "dangle" over the stone. By 1990 Kipniss had completed about 450 editions of lithographs, usually of 90 to 250 impressions, at the Burr Miller studio in Manhattan. He worked from 1969 with master printer Burr Miller and then with Steve and Terry, his sons. Works by the artist are in the following public collections: • Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor* • Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria* • Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY • Arkansas State University Permanent Collection, State University, AR • Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL • Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA • Art Students League of New York, New York, NY • Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME • Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA • Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris* • Boston Athenæum, Boston, MA • Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME* • British Museum, London, England* • Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY* • Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH • Canton Art Institute, Canton, OH • Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA • Century Association, New York, NY • Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH* • Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH • Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay...

Oil on canvas, signed lower left. Measures 20" x 22" painting and 21.75". x 23.75". including the frame. Provenance: Harmon Meek Gallery Naples, Florida Weinstein Gallery, Robert Kipniss, 21st Century...

Backyard II Lithograph, 1972 Signed lower right Signed lower right Annotated: Printer's Proof Reference: Karl Lunde 58 An impression is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chic...

Studio Flowers Lithograph, 1982 Signed lower right (see photo) Numbered lower left Edition: 120 (42/120) (see photo) Condition: Mint condition Two bits of hinge residue verso Image size: 24 x 18 inches Sheet size: 28 1/4 x 21 1/4 inches Reference: Lunde Robert Kipniss (1921 Considered one of the greatest living American printmakers, with a professional career that spans seven decades and work that can be found in over 170 museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; The British Museum, London; the Albertina, Vienna; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London; The Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Kipniss was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1980, and to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London, in 1998. He has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of American Graphic Artists and The Artists Fellowship. He has also received the Speicher-Hassam Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as Honorary Doctorates from Wittenberg University and Illinois College. Selected Public Collections Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Arkansas State University Permanent Collection, State University, Arkansas The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, Virginia Art Students League of New York, New York, New York Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine The British Museum, London Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio Canton Art Institute, Canton, Ohio Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The Century Association, New York, New York The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay...

Robert Kipniss (American, b. 1931) At Dawn, 1975 Pencil on paper 10 1/2 x 7 1/4 in. Framed: 14 2/3 x 11 1/3 in. Signed upper right: Kipniss '75 Verso bears Hirschl & Adler Galleries Label Robert Kipniss, painter and printmaker, was born in New York City in 1931. He creates essentially monochromatic*, stylized vistas with natural and architectural elements intended to evoke an elegiac, nearly surrealistic mood in haunting, silent landscapes; the melancholy of nostalgia. Trees, in mid and far-distance, form clusters or act as misty individuals containing a haunted, indefinable presence, witnesses to the foreground drama of more specific shape, form and detail, often a close-up tree. Kipniss studied at the Art Students League* in 1947; Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, 1948-50; and the University of Iowa, receiving a BA degree in English literature in 1952, and an MFA in painting and art history in 1954. The artist employs a meticulous technique combining a multiplicity of specific strokes, whether with brush, pencil or print-maker's needle and burin*, to create the essence of his generalized, non-specific forms. Light and darkness are clearly Kipniss' compositionally constructive elements. They also exist as contestants in the emotional drama at the heart of each work of art. The contrast, and sometimes combat, between these two opposites, symbolically represent with blackness -- ideas of threat, fear, trouble, evil; with whiteness safety, redemption, fulfillment and good. In Kipniss' 1995 mezzotint*, Clear Vase and Landscape, with a foreground image of precisely leafy stalks, the vase holding them, nearly invisible in its transparency, suggests an almost Salvador Dali-like surrealist device. This central image dominates but seems to invite association with, and commentary from, the surrounding clumps and individual round-topped, yet cedar-like trees. His mezzzotint, For Stella," 1997, depicts a gently twisting, curving, pale and smoothly-barked foreground, leafless tree limb or trunk, like a female human body, suggesting weakness, fatigue, an inability to deal with the staccato background screen of textured bush that seems to uncomfortably impinge upon it. This print is arguably a metaphor for a delicate soul struggling to overcome the prickly difficulties of domineering life. The classic mezzotint process, invented in the middle of the 17th Century, is the reverse of most of the other print-making media, since the artist works from a black ground to increasingly lighter areas. The copper plate is first roughened by a "rocker," creating a burr over the entire surface (the more burr left intact, the more ink it holds, the darker the final finished print). The artist, Robert Kipniss, in this instance, gradually burnishes, smoothes down the burr in varying degrees to produce the gradations of lights and darks of the final design. The deepest darks in the final picture are those areas on the plate that have been little touched after the initial roughening. Mezzotint relies on shade and tone rather than outline for its effect, which fits the Kipniss style of atmospheric* masses of value. A recent oil painting by Robert Kipniss, Hillside Silhouettes, 2001, 40 x 29, is somewhat more complex in composition than many, with four cubically-constructed houses each set in their own zones, seemingly unrelated to one another, with receding hills and similarly isolated, increasingly misty trees beyond. In his career, Robert Kipniss has had over 40 one-man shows since the first in New York in 1951, including an important retrospective exhibition at the Associated American Artist Gallery, New York in 1977. Many of these one-man exhibitions have been mounted by over 50 museums in the United States, South America and Europe, including the Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modem Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of Congress and British Museum in London. Robert Kipniss is represented in the permanent collections of the institutions above, among many others, as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Art Institute; Yale University Museum; National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He was elected to the National Academy of Design* in 1980, and to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London in 1998 Robert Kipniss can be referenced in numerous publications, including Who's Who in American Art from the 1950s to the present, and multiple reviews in periodicals like Art News, Art in America and Art Forum. There are also three important catalogues raisonne published on his work. Robert Kipniss has received many awards: 1965 - Ohio University National Drawing Show, Purchase Prize 1976 - National Academy of Design, New York City, The Ralph Fabri Prize 1978 - The Print Club of Philadelphia, Charles M Lea Prize 1979 - Charlotte Printmakers Society, Purchase Award 1979 - Society of American Graphic Artists, Printmaking Award 1979 - Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH, Honorary Doctorate 1980 - Elected to the National Academy of Design, New York City 1980 - Audubon Artists, New York City, Silver Medal 1980 - National Academy of Design, New York City, The Leo Meissner...

Artist: Robert Kipniss, American (1931 - ) Title: Interior with Cup and Kettle Year: 1986 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 120, AP XV Image Size: 12 x 10 in...

This artwork "Landscape" c.1980 is an original color lithograph on wove paper by noted American artist Robert Kipniss, b.1931. It is hand signed and numbered 168/200 in pencil by the...

Tall Vase with Glasses by Robert Kipniss, American (1931) Date: circa 1980 Lithograph, signed in pencil Edition of AP Image Size: 12 x 10 inches Frame ...

This artwork "Landscape with Trees" c.1980 is an original lithograph on wove paper by noted American artist Robert Kipniss, b.1931. It is hand si...

“Slope w/five trees” is a drypoint engraving created by Robert Kipniss in 2020. The paper size is 12.50 x 10.50 inches and the printed image size is 6.75 x ...

This artwork titled "Silver Trees" c.1970 is an original lithograph on wove paper by noted American artist Robert Kipniss, b.1931. It is hand signed and nu...

“Chair & rooftop” is a mezzotint engraving created by Robert Kipniss in 2015. Printed in an edition of 30 this impression is signed in pencil and inscribed "27/30." The paper size i...

The drypoint engraving entitled "A small copse in a field" was created by Robert Kipniss in 2016. Printed in an edition of 16 - this impression is signed in pencil and inscribed “12...

Artist: Robert Kipniss, American (1931 - ) Title: Tual Year: circa 1980 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: Trial Proof Image Size: 14.75 x 11.75 inches Frame...

"Evening II" is a mezzotint engraving created by Robert Kipniss in 2008. Printed in an edition of 60, this impression is signed in pencil and inscribed “8/60.” The paper size is 12...

Robert Kipniss created the oil painting entitled "Window w/Curtain & Hill" in 2013. The canvas size for this piece is 36 x 25 inches – the framed size is slightly larger. This paint...

Artist: Robert Kipniss, American (1931 - ) Title: Shack with a Tree in Front Year: circa 1980 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 90 Image Size: 14 x 10 inches...