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Ray H. FrenchUntitled (Seascape at night)1964
1964
$2,500
£1,908.68
€2,186.11
CA$3,502.49
A$3,916.21
CHF 2,054.22
MX$47,434.72
NOK 25,930.44
SEK 24,498
DKK 16,317.14
About the Item
Untitled (Seascape at night)
Tissue paper collage on Fabriano wove paper, 1964
Signed in ink lower left
Annotated 42 in pencil on verso
Condition: Excellent
Image/Sheet size: 10 x 13 7/8 inches
Part of a suite of collages created during the artist's sabatical leave from teaching, spent in Florence, Italy, studying at the Accademia D'Arte Firenze in 1963-1964.
Ray H. French: The Evolution of an Artistic Innovator
Printmaker, painter, and sculptor Ray H. French was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on May 16, 1919. Terre Haute was a cultural wasteland before the opening of the Sheldon Swope Art Museum in 1942. Thus, with a father as a coal miner and carpenter, art remained a luxury for Ray. Nevertheless, local art teachers Mabel Mikel Williams and Nola E. Williams helped to foster his creativity and unshakable drive to create things of beauty.
After high school, Ray attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. His studies there were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, during which he developed surveillance photographs for the Army Air Force. After the war, Ray transferred to the University of Iowa on the G.I. Bill, where he received both his BFA and MFA degrees. The University of Iowa during the 1940s was a cultural mecca with many major art historians and artists. While in Iowa, Ray played an important role in this culture by becoming a founding member of the Iowa Print Group under Mauricio Lasansky.
Following his graduation in 1948, Ray experienced firsthand the rapid rise in creative printmaking in America. By 1949, he had exhibited at The Brooklyn Museum, the Walker Art Center, and MOMA New York. Ray’s early style of printmaking is characterized by pure line engraving on copper plates, a technique suited perfectly to his study of the beauty of animals. This charming and whimsical subject ran counter to the concurrent trends of Lasansky’s horrors of war and Hayter’s non-objectivity, but was equally effective in capturing the public’s attention. Walruses was purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum, exhibited at MOMA New York and received the Arthur D. Allen Memorial Purchase Prize for its “skillful and economic use of line.” Shortly thereafter, Ray’s treatment of animals developed further into larger format mixed intaglio prints utilizing hard ground, soft ground, etching, and engraving, as exemplified in The Swan.
By the late 1950s, Ray’s style evolved into organic non-objectivity, in which he incorporated personal autobiographical vignettes and symbolism. His work during this time was further characterized by a departure from the traditional squared compositional format to his cutting and rounding of the plate to accentuate organic shapes. Ray’s 1959 Enchantment remains particularly illustrative of his use of etching and soft ground intaglio. Enchantment was successfully exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the 12th National Print Exhibition of The American Federation of the Arts and received the Pennell Purchase Prize from the Library of Congress in 1960.
In the 1960s, Ray also started to focus on blind embossing, which he had first experimented with at the University of Iowa. He was extremely prolific and successful with this medium, selling hundreds of prints in small editions of 10 through the Associated American Artist Gallery in New York. In 1966, Ray built upon his mastery of embossing and began developing a shadow box presentation called a graphic construction that combined color, blind embossing, and multi-layered cutouts to revel intaglio compositions. Noted curator William Lieberman purchased Ray’s masterpiece graphic construction, Moon Rays, on the behalf of MOMA New York and another impression was gifted to the University of Iowa Museum of Art by Alan and Ann January in 2004.
Throughout his artistic career, Ray was also a professor and administrator at DePauw University, which occupied much of his time. Outside of his creative expression, Ray was most proud of his teaching and influencing students to find beauty in their daily lives. Specifically, he was a particularly fervent advocate of printmaking and joined the ranks of many of Lasansky’s students who went on to establish printmaking programs and departments and to further lift the stature of intaglio printmaking. During Ray’s time at DePauw, he received grants to travel around Europe. His yearlong stay in Florence led to a series of etchings, drypoints, and woodcuts of Italian and Etruscan subjects and provided inspiration for many years.
In 1984, Ray retired from his university service to work in a private studio behind his home on DePauw’s campus. After several life threatening illnesses, Ray decided to return to his early creative style of realist depictions of nature and landscape. Eventually, Ray’s health deteriorated further with the onset of macular degeneration. Legally blind, he continued to create art until shortly before his death in 2000 at the age of 80. “Sometimes when I look at a work I create, I am amazed at what inspired it. I ask myself, how on earth did I create this?” said Ray once. Ultimately, this quest to find beauty and create inspiring works of art provided the greatest source of Ray’s happiness and fulfillment, evidenced by the breadth and quality of his artistic legacy.
- Creator:Ray H. French (1919-2000, American)
- Creation Year:1964
- Dimensions:Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 13.88 in (35.26 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Fairlawn, OH
- Reference Number:Seller: FA121581stDibs: LU14015623192
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By Ray H. French
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Seascape at Sunset
Collage with tissue paper and gold foil on Fabriano paper, 1964
Signed and dated in ink, lower right (see photo)
Provenance:
Estate of the artist
Martha A. French...
Category
1960s Mixed Media
Materials
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Untitled (Tuscan Landscape)
By Ray H. French
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled (Tuscan Landscape)
Tissue paper collage on Fabriano support
Signed and dated lower right in ink
Provenance:
Estate of the artist
Martha A. French Trust
Created while the art...
Category
1960s American Modern Mixed Media
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Untitled
By Virginia Dehn
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Mixed media with collage elements on paper, c. 1990's
Signed by the artist in pencil lower right (see photo)
Condition: Excellent
Image size: 7 x 6 1/2 inches
Support sheet size: 10 1/2 x 8 3/8 inches
Provenance: Estate of the artist
Dehn Heirs
Virginia Dehn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Virginia Dehn
Virginia Dehn in her studio in Santa Fe
Virginia Dehn (née Engleman) (October 26, 1922 – July 28, 2005) was an American painter and printmaker. Her work was known for its interpretation of natural themes in almost abstract forms. She exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the U.S. Her paintings are included in many public collections.
Life
Dehn was born in Nevada, Missouri on October 26, 1922.] Raised in Hamden, Connecticut, she studied at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri before moving to New York City. She met the artist Adolf Dehn while working at the Art Students League. They married in November 1947. The two artists worked side by side for many years, part of a group of artists who influenced the history of 20th century American art. Their Chelsea brownstone was a place where artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered.
Early career
Virginia Dehn studied art at Stephens College in Missouri before continuing her art education at the Traphagen School of Design, and, later, the Art Students League, both located in New York City. In the mid-1940s while working at the Associated American Artists gallery, she met lithographer and watercolorist Adolf Dehn. Adolf was older than Virginia, and he already enjoyed a successful career as an artist. The two were married in 1947 in a private ceremony at Virginia's parents house in Wallingford, Connecticut.
Virginia and Adolf Dehn
The Dehns lived in a Chelsea brownstone on West 21st Street where they worked side by side. They often hosted gatherings of other influential artists and intellectuals of the 20th century. Among their closest friends were sculptor Federico Castellón and his wife Hilda; writer Sidney Alexander and his wife Frances; artists Sally and Milton Avery; Ferol and Bill Smith, also an artist; and Lily and Georges Schreiber, an artist and writer. Bob Steed and his wife Gittel, an anthropologist, were also good friends of the Dehns. According to friend Gretchen Marple Pracht, "Virginia was a glamorous and sophisticated hostess who welcomed visitors to their home and always invited a diverse crowd of guests..." Despite their active social life, the two were disciplined artists, working at their easels nearly daily and taking Saturdays to visit galleries and view new work.
The Dehns made annual trips to France to work on lithographs at the Atelier Desjobert in Paris. Virginia used a bamboo pen to draw directly on the stone for her lithographs, which often depicted trees or still lifes. The Dehns' other travels included visits to Key West, Colorado, Mexico, and countries such as Greece, Haiti, Afghanistan, and India.
Dehn's style of art differend greatly from that of her husband, though the two sometimes exhibited together. A friend of the couple remarked, "Adolf paints landscapes; Virginia paints inscapes." Virginia Dehn generally painted an interior vision based on her feelings for a subject, rather than a literal rendition of it.] Many of her paintings consist of several layers, with earlier layers showing through. She found inspiration in the Abstract Expressionism movement that dominated the New York and Paris art scenes in the 1950s. Some of her favorite artists included Adolf Gottileb, Rothko, William Baziotes, Pomodoro, and Antonio Tapies.
Dehn most often worked with bold, vibrant colors in large formats. Her subjects were not literal, but intuitive. She learned new techniques of lithography from her husband Adolf, and did her own prints. Texture was very important to her in her work. Her art was influenced by a variety of sources. In the late 1960s she came across a book that included photographs of organic patterns of life as revealed under a microscope. These images inspired her to change the direction of some of her paintings. Other influences on Dehn's art came from ancient and traditional arts of various cultures throughout the world, including Persian miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, Dutch still life painting, Asian art, ancient Egyptian artifacts...
Category
1990s Contemporary Mixed Media
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Untitled
By Ray H. French
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Signed and dated "1962" by the artist lower right.
Mixed media on heavy paper.
Done for a show to fund a trip to Italy.
Category
1960s Abstract Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
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Located in Fairlawn, OH
Signed and dated center right edge; Annotated "48" lower left
Provenance:
Estate of the artist
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Most were sold thro...
Category
1960s Abstract Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
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By Ray H. French
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Signed and dated by the artist vertically lower left edge.
Part of an experimental series of works using motor oil, India Ink, adhesives, sand, and various other mediums.
Category
1960s Abstract Paintings
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