American Modern Prints and Multiples

'Winter Silhouettes,' a small and delicate print, is an original offset lithograph by the Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner. The composition displays registers of foliage, emerging from the white of the paper as though emerging from the snow-covered ground. The artwork is thus plays with the materials of printmaking; the paper is both the support and the primary indication of the season. The subtle texture of the tooth of the paper also adds life to the image, giving the snow a wind-swept, creature trodden surface. The free forms of the grasses and leaves resemble the lyrical mid-century works of the French artist Henri Matisse, which combined with these material concerns demonstrate Lichter's modern sensibilities. 3.75 x 2.75 inches, image 5.5 x 4.5 inches, paper 9.25 x 7.75 inches frame Signed and dated in the stone, lower right Framed to conservation standards using 100 percent rag matting, museum glass, and housed in a modern silver moulding Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner was well known for his whimsical cows and ballerinas and abstract imagery. He and his late wife Ruth Grotenrath, both well-known Wisconsin artists, began their prolific careers as muralists for WPA projects, primarily post offices. Lichtner also painted murals for industry and private clients. Schomer was a printmaker and produced block prints, lithographs, and serigraph prints. His casein (paint made from dairy products) and acrylic paintings are of the rural Wisconsin landscape and farm animals. He became interested in cows when he and Ruth spent summers near Holy Hill in Washington County. According to David Gordon, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Schomer Lichtner had a tremendous joie de vivre and expressed it in his art. Schomer Lichtner was nationally known for his whimsical paintings and sculptures of black- and white-patterned Holstein cows and elegant ballerina dancers. Lichtner also painted all sorts of combinations of beautiful women, flowers and country landscapes. James Auer, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic, said that his art eventually "exploded into expressionistic design elements with bold, flat areas of color and high energy that anticipated Pop Art." Auer went on to describe Lichtner’s work as full of "wit, vigor and virtuosity." As early as 1930, Lichtner’s work was shown at the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition in New York and at museums throughout the Midwest. As a student, he was a protégé of another icon of 20th century American art, Gustave Moeller. Lichtner and his wife, Ruth Grotenrath (1912-1988), are celebrated as Milwaukee’s first couple of painting and are regarded as major Wisconsin artists. Lichtner’s impressive production, perseverance, longevity, and positive approach to his life and art made him and his work distinctive and much loved by his many admirers. His work is currently represented in collections at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the West Bend Museum, and in the collections of many individuals. Books on the lives and art work of both Lichtner and Grotenrath are in progress and it is anticipated that they will be published next year. Schomer Lichtner passed away on May 9, 2006 at the age of 101. He continued to amaze and create with his whimsical paintings of ballerinas and cows. The late James Auer, art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel referred to Lichtner as the artist laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the official artist of the Milwaukee Ballet...

Elizabeth Catlett “Man” 1975 (The Print Club of Cleveland Publication Number 83, 2005) Woodcut and Color Linocut Printed in 2003 at JK Fine Art Editions Co., Union City, New Jersey Signed and Dated By The Artist Lower Right Titled Lower Left Ed. of 250 Image Size: approx 18 x 12 inches Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) is regarded as one of the most important women artists and African American artists of our time. She believed art could affect social change and that she should be an agent for that change: “I have always wanted my art to service black people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” As an artist and an activist, Catlett highlighted the dignity and courage of motherhood, poverty, and the working class, returning again and again to the subject she understood best—African American women. The work below, entitled, “Man”, is "carved from a block of wood, chiseled like a relief. Catlett, a sculptor as well as a printmaker, carves figures out of wood, and so is extremely familiar with this material. For ‘Man’ she exploits the grain of the wood, allowing to to describe the texture of the skin and form vertical striations, almost scarring the image. Below this intense, three-dimensional visage parades seven boys, printed repetitively from a single linoleum block in a “rainbow roll” that changes from gold to brown. This row of brightly colored figures with bare feet, flat like a string of paper dolls, raise their arms toward the powerful depiction of the troubled man above.” Biography: Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Known for abstract sculpture in bronze and marble as well as prints and paintings, particularly depicting the female figure, Elizabeth Catlett is unique for distilling African American, Native American, and Mexican art in her work. She is "considered by many to be the greatest American black sculptor". . .(Rubinstein 320) Catlett was born in Washington D.C. and later became a Mexican citizen, residing in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico. She spent the last 35 years of her life in Mexico. Her father, a math teacher at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, died before she was born, but the family, including her working mother, lived in the relatively commodious home of his family in DC. Catlett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, where there was much discussion about whether or not black artists should depict their own heritage or embrace European modernism. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940 from the University of Iowa, where she had gone to study with Grant Wood, Regionalist* painter. His teaching dictum was "paint what you know best," and this advice set her on the path of dealing with her own background. She credits Wood with excellent teaching and deep concern for his students, but she had a problem during that time of taking classes from him because black students were not allowed housing in the University's dormitories. Following graduation in 1940, she became Chair of the Art Department at Dillard University in New Orleans. There she successfully lobbied for life classes with nude models, and gained museum admission to black students at a local museum that to that point, had banned their entrance. That same year, her painting Mother and Child, depicting African-American figures won her much recognition. From 1944 to 1946, she taught at the George Washington Carver School, an alternative community school in Harlem that provided instruction for working men and women of the city. From her experiences with these people, she did a series of paintings, prints, and sculptures with the theme "I Am a Negro Woman." In 1946, she received a Rosenwald Fellowship*, and she and her artist husband, Charles White, traveled to Mexico where she became interested in the Mexican working classes. In 1947, she settled permanently in Mexico where she, divorced from White, married artist Francisco Mora...

Shepard FAIREY Mayday Flag Original screen print (serigraphy) Handsigned in pencil On cream paper 19 x 25.5 cm (c. 7.5 x 10 inch) Excellent condition ABOUT : "We found a stash of...

Rockwell Kent "Hail and Farewell" 1930 Wood Engraving on Paper Signed in Pencil Lower Right Sheet Size: 14 3/8 x 11 1/4 in. Image Size: 8 x 5 1/2 in. Framed Size: 17.5 x 13.5 in. Growing up in a genteel family in New York City, Rockwell Kent was a member of the rugged realist school of landscape painters as well as a popular illustrator and printmaker. His 1930 illustrations for Moby Dick are among his most lasting achievements. He was the first American artist to have work exhibited in the Soviet Union, a reflection of his Communist Party sympathies, which earned him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967. This espousal of radical politics caused his career to suffer badly in the '50s because his leftist views caused him disdain among many Americans. However, his work, reflecting both realism and modernism, has earned increasing attention from American art historians. His subject matter is wide-ranging including scenes of Maine's Monhegan Island, the Adirondack Mountains, book illustrations, and commercial art renderings for companies including General Electric, Rolls Royce, and Westinghouse. Although his first love was painting, in addition to illustration, he also did fabric, ceramic, and jewelry designs, and spent time as a dairy farmer, carpenter, home builder, and lobster fisherman...

there is a companion piece on a silver paper. A depiction of a ballet dancer, superimposed upon canceled dance class checks. Joanne Seltzer was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania a...

Andrew Wyeth "Dogwood" 1983 Collotype Ed. 115/300 Signed and Numbered Lower Right Image Size: 21 x 28 3/4 inches Framed Size: approx. 29 x 36.5 inches A painter of landscape and figure subjects in Pennsylvania and Maine, Andrew Wyeth became one of the best-known American painters of the 20th century. His style is both realistic and abstract, and he works primarily in tempera and watercolor, often using the drybrush technique. He is the son of Newell Convers and Carolyn Bockius Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and was home-schooled because of delicate health. His art instruction came from his famous-illustrator father, who preached the tying of painting to life--to mood and to essences and to capturing the subtleties of changing light and shadows. The Wyeth household was a lively place with much intellectual and social stimulation. Because of the prominence of N.C. Wyeth, persons including many dignitaries came from all over the country to visit the family. Andrew's sisters Carolyn and Henriette became noted artists as did his brother-in-law, Peter Hurd. The non-art oriented brother, Nathaniel Wyeth...

Serpentine with Orchids, 2005 Four-color screenprint on Rives BFK. Edition: 50 + 7 artist’s proofs 28 x 22 (paper size) framed by Bark Frameworks. Michael Burton Mazur (1935-August 18, 2009) was an American artist who was described by William Grimes of The New York Times as "a restlessly inventive printmaker, painter, and sculptor." Born and raised in New York City, Mazur attended the Horace Mann School. He received a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1958, then studied art at Yale. Mazur first gained notice for his series of lithographs and etchings of inmates in a mental asylum, which resulted in two publications, "Closed Ward" and "Locked Ward." Over the years, he worked in printmaking and painting. His series of large-scale prints for Dante's Inferno won critical acclaim, and were the subject of a traveling exhibition organized by the University of Iowa in 1994. Later he concentrated on creating large, lyrical paintings which make use of his free, gestural brushwork and a varied palette. Some of these paintings were seen in an exhibition of 2002 at Boston University, "Looking East: Brice Marden, Michael Mazur, and Pat Steir." (See also Susan Danly, "Branching: The Art of Michael Mazur," 1997). The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has acquired a definMichael Mazur received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1957, studying in his senior year at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. He went on to earn both a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1961. Mazur's first teaching job was at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1961 to 1964. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for 1964–65. From 1965 to 1976, he taught at Brandeis University, and from 1976 to 1978 at Harvard University. As an artist, teacher, and writer, Mazur has been active in reviving the monotype process. He contributed an essay to the pioneering exhibition catalogue The Painterly Print, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1980. Mazur recently chaired the New Provincetown...

After Victor VASARELY Geometric Screen Print Signature printed in the plate On paper 101 x 64 cm (c. 40 x 26 inch) Made for the Olympic Games in Munich, 1972 Excellent condition

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) "Custer's Last Fight" Lithograph Ed. 54/75 Signed and Numbered Site Size: approx 22 x 30 inches Framed Size: approx. 35 x 41.5 inches Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder became a prominent Indian portrait, figure, and genre painter in Arizona. His father was part Indian, and Fritz Scholder chose to focus his art work on this part of his lineage and to express both an appreciation and disdain for Indian customs, traditions, and daily existence. He studied at the University of Kansas, Wisconsin State University, and with Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento College in California. He earned an Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona. A long-time resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, he has filled a number of artist-in-residence positions including Dartmouth College and the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. In his work, he frequently showed the harsh, realistic side of Indians' lives and deaths including the affects of alcohol and other dissipations, but some of his depictions are humorous such as Indians on horseback carrying umbrellas. His brush-work is generally swift, and the tone often sombre and surreal. A major influence on his work was the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon, from whom Scholder adapted ironic distortions into his canvases. In Scottsdale, he lived in an adobe-walled oasis of palm trees and oleander, amid skulls and skeletons. In the garden, several of Mr. Scholder's sculptures feature skull-like heads. In the library, an 18th-century skull engraved with witchcraft symbols shared shelf space with books printed before 1500. And the porch had been converted into a skull room, complete with Mexican Day of the Dead...

Skyline, New York. 1919. Etching and drypoint. McCarron 36. 8 7/8 x 10 3/8 (sheet 12 1/4 x 14 . 11 recorded impressions (intended edition 50. Lewis states that he destroyed 6 of the ...

Fritz Eichenberg created ten wood engravings to illustrate 'The Praise of Folly' by Erasmus. This particular image seems to portray the idea that "War, civil society and the arts ar...

Original soft-ground etching with spit bite aquatint printed in colors on Rives wove paper Hand-signed with the artist’s monogram and dated in pencil in the margin lower right RD 80...

Jamie Wyeth "Herring Gulls" 1978 Color Lithograph Signed Lower Right Numbered Lower Left 149/300 Born in 1946, James Browning Wyeth came of age when the meaning of patriotism was clouded by the traumas of the Vietnam War and the scandals of Watergate. Working in an era of turmoil and questioning of governmental authority, he did art that encompassed both marching off to war and marching in protest. One of James's early masterworks, Draft Age (1965) depicts a childhood friend as a defiant Vietnam-era teenager resplendent in dark sunglasses and black leather jacket in a suitably insouciant pose. Two years later Wyeth painstakingly composed a haunting, posthumous Portrait of President John F. Kennedy (1967) that seems to catch the martyred Chief Executive in a moment of agonized indecision. As Wyeth Center curator Lauren Raye Smith points out, Wyeth "did not deify the slain president, [but] on the contrary made him seem almost too human." Based on hours of study and sketching of JFK's brothers Robert and Edward - documented by insightful studies in the exhibition - the final, pensive portrait seemed too realistic to family members and friends. "His brother Robert," writes Smith in the exhibition catalogue, "reportedly felt uneasy about this depiction, and said it reminded him of the President during the Bay of Pigs invasion." In spite of these misgivings, James's JFK likeness has been reproduced frequently and is one of the highlights of this show. The poignancy, appeal and perceptiveness of this portrait, painted when the youngest Wyeth was 21 years old, makes one wish he would do more portraits of important public figures. James himself feels he is at his best painting people he knows well, as exemplified by his vibrant Portrait of Jean Kennedy Smith (1972), which captures the vitality of the slain President's handsome sister. He did paint a portrait of Jimmy Carter for the January 1977 man-of-the-year cover of Time magazine, showing the casually dressed President-elect as a straightforward character posed under a flag-draped water tower next to the family peanut plant in Plains, Ga. James recalls that Carter had one Secret Service agent guarding him as he posed outdoors, a far cry from the protection our Chief Executives require today. As a participating artist in the "Eyewitness to Space" program organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in the late 1960s, Wyeth deftly recorded in a series of watercolors his eyewitness observations of dramatic spacecraft launchings and more mundane scenes associated with the space program. Commissioned by Harper's Magazine to cover the 1974 congressional hearings and trials of Watergate figures, James Wyeth executed a series of perceptive and now evocative sketches that recall those dark chapters in our history. Memorable images include a scowling John Ehrlichman, a hollow-eyed Bob Haldeman, an owlish Charles Colson, a focused Congressman Peter Rodino, a grim visaged Father/ Congressman Robert Drinan, and vignettes of the press and various courtroom activities. An 11-by-14-inch pencil sketch of the unflappable Judge John Sirica is especially well done. These "images are powerful as historical records," observes Smith, "and as lyrically journalistic impressions of events that changed the nation forever." Wyeth's sketch of early-morning crowds lined up outside the Supreme Court building hoping to hear the Watergate case, with the ubiquitous TV cameramen looking on, is reminiscent of recent scenes as the high court grappled with the Bush-Gore contest. The Wyeth family penchant for whimsy and enigmatic images is evident in Islanders (1990), showing two of James's friends, wearing goofy hats, sitting on the porch of a small Monhegan Island (Me.) cottage draped with a large American flag. Mixing the serious symbolism of Old Glory with the irreverent appearance of the two men, James has created a puzzling but interesting composition. Painting White House...

Quarter of Nine, Saturday's Children. 1929. Drypoint. McCarron 78. 9 3/4 x 12 3/4 (sheet 12 7/8 x 17 7/8). Illustrated: American Etchers: Martin Lewis. Edition 107. A fine impression...

Joan Snyder has been called an autobiographical, even confessional artist, who draws from her experiences and surroundings to create her paintings. While her subjects vary widely, Sn...

Dana Schutz is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for her humorous, gestural paintings that take on specific subjects or narrative situat...

Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" a...

McCarron 74. 11 7/8 x 9 7/8 (sheet 17 1/8 x 13 3/4). Edition of 111. Illustrated: American Etchers: Martin Lewis. A brilliant, luminous impression with rich, velvety burr, printed on cream laid paper. Signed in pencil. Price upon request. Housed in an archival mat and a 25 x 21-inch black wood frame. According to McCarron, page 136, "The popularity of Relics when first issued is clear; the entire edition sold in just a few months, a spectacular achievement for a printmaker of the time." The location depicted in Relics is the intersection of Charles Street and West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, a few blocks from Lewis's house on Bedford Street. During Lewis' lifetime, Relics was his most popular print, and the entire edition was sold. Relics and Glow of the City...

Stoops in Snow. 1930. Drypoint and sandpaper ground. McCarron catalog 89.state ii. 9 x 14 7/8 (sheet 13 1/4 x 18 7/16 ). . Edition 115 recorded impress...

ROBERT COTTINGHAM Fox, from American Signs portfolio, 2009 screenprint in colors, on wove paper, with full margins 40 1/8 x 39 1/8 in (101.9 x 99.4 cm) signed, dated `2009' a...

Medium: Hand colored offset lithograph Frame size: 16 x 15 inches Stamped on verso by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Warhol Foundation

Jim Stoker was born in Nash, Texas, in 1935, and grew up in Atlanta, Texas. He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Applied Art in 1957. His teaching career...