Abstract Prints

Kandinsky at Galerie Karl Flinker - 1977 Exhibition Poster - in Ink on Paper Poster with a reproduction of "Merry Structure" by Vassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944). This posted i...

Artist: James Rosenquist Title: New York Says It All Portfolio: New York, New York Year: 1983 Medium: Screenprint and Offset Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 250 P...

Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world o...

Jim Dine, 1985 Color Lithograph on wove paper with deckled edges 38 1/2 × 27 1/2 inches Edition of 300 Unframed Signed in plate, unnumbered; bears museum copyright on the lower front...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-...

This exquisite lithograph by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), titled Forme Jaune (Yellow Shape), originates from the historic 1958 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 110. Published by Maeght ...

David Hockney Richard Strauss: Los Angeles Music Center Opera (Hand Signed and Inscribed), 1993 Offset Lithograph (hand signed and inscribed by David Hockney) 30 × 20 inches Signed a...

This fold-out card showcases Donald Judd's Series of Ten Woodcuts in Three Color States: Cadmium Red Light, Ultramarine Blue, and Ivory Black. Published by Brooke Alexander, the card...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern minimalist shapes. "Better Together" it's made by layering paper cutouts and ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Madame M.P. (Mrs. M.P.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates from th...

This exquisite woodcut by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), titled Komposition (Composition), from the album XXe siecle, Chroniques du jour, 13 rue Valette (5e), Directeur G. di San Laz...

This exquisite lithograph and pochoir by Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), titled Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), from the album XXe siecle, Nouvelle serie, XXIe Annee, No. 12, Mai-Jui...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Madame L.D. (Mrs. L.D.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates from th...

This is an original poster created for Jasper Johns’ exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, held from January 10 to February 7, 1981—a significant presentation by one of the most influe...

Françoise Gilot Window on Another Dimension, 1981 Lithograph on Arches mould made Johannot paper Signed and numbered in graphite pencil; also bears artist's monogram with date, edition of 60 Unframed 27.25 inches by 19.75 inches Francoise Gilot was not just Picasso's muse; she was an accomplished artist in her own right, and at age 100, the New York Times dubbed her the art world's latest "It Girl".! Signed and numbered in graphite pencil; also bears artist's personal monograph with date. Held in original vintage frame under plexiglass. Charmingly, there is a sticker label on the back of the frame, from the "Picasso Gallery Custom Framing" in D.C. This silkscreen is based upon Gilot's eponymous painting, also done in 1981 Excerpt from Alan Riding's 2023 New York Times obituary on Gilot: " Françoise Gilot, an accomplished painter whose art was eclipsed by her long and stormy romantic relationship with a much older Pablo Picasso, and who alone among his many mistresses walked out on him, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 101...But unlike his two wives and other mistresses, Ms. Gilot rebuilt her life after she ended the relationship, in 1953, almost a decade after it had begun despite an age difference of 40 years. She continued painting and exhibiting her work and wrote books. In 1970, she married Jonas Salk, the American medical researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine, and lived part of the time in California. Still, it was for her romance with Picasso that the public knew her best, particularly after her memoir, “Life with Picasso,” written with Carlton Lake, was published in 1964. It became an international best seller, and so infuriated Picasso that he broke off all contact with Ms. Gilot and their two children, Claude and Paloma Picasso. Ms. Gilot’s frank and often-sympathetic account of their relationship — she dedicated the book “to Pablo” — provided much of the material for the 1996 Merchant-Ivory movie, “Surviving Picasso,” in which she was played by Natascha McElhone, with Anthony Hopkins as Picasso. If Ms. Gilot’s book sold well, so has her art. With her work in more than a dozen museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, her paintings fetched increasingly higher prices well into her later years. As recently as June 2021, her painting “Paloma à la Guitare” (1965), a blue-toned portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million in an online auction by Sotheby’s. That surpassed her previous record price, $695,000, paid for “Étude bleue,” a 1953 portrait of a seated woman, at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014.. And in November 2021, her abstract 1977 canvas “Living Forest” sold for $1.3 million as part of a retrospective of her work at Christie’s in Hong Kong. Lisa Stevenson, the head of curated sales for Sotheby’s in London, told ARTnews after the 2021 auction, “It isn’t commonly known that Gilot’s commitment to art was present long before her relationship with Pablo Picasso, and she was sadly often left in his shadow.”.. Marie Françoise Gilot was born into a prosperous family on Nov. 26, 1921, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, the only child of Emile Gilot, an agronomist and chemical manufacturer, and Madeleine Renoult-Gilot. Her 19th-century ancestors had owned a couturier house of fashion whose clientele included Eugenia, the wife of Emperor Napoleon III. Marie Françoise was drawn to art from an early age, tutored by her mother, who had studied art history, ceramics and watercolor painting. Her father, however — recalled by Ms. Gilot as an authoritarian who had forced her to write with her right hand, though she was left-handed — had other ideas. Envisioning a career in science or the law for his daughter, he persuaded her to enroll at the University of Paris, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1938 at age 17. She went on to study at the Sorbonne and the British Institute in Paris and receive a degree in English literature from Cambridge University. As war crept closer to France in 1939, her father sent her to the city of Rennes, northwest of Paris, to enroll in law school. All the while she continued working on her paintings. Then came the German occupation of Paris, in June 1940, and she joined other students in an anti-German protest march at the Arc de Triomphe. In a clash with the French and German authorities, Ms. Gilot was arrested, briefly detained and put under watch. “From day one, we were not the kind of people who would become collaborators,” she said of her family. She continued her law studies at the University of Paris, but after taking her second-year examinations, in June 1941, she lost interest and abandoned the field, deciding to devote herself to art. She began private lessons with a fugitive Hungarian Jewish painter, Endre Rozsda...

Joan Miró - Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró XIV Date of creation: 1975 Medium: Lithograph on Gvarro paper Edition: 1500 Size: 49,5 x 35,5 cm Condition: In ...

This exquisite lithograph after Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), titled Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), from the album San Lazzaro et ses Amis, Hommage au fondateur de la revue XXe si...

Joa Miro's rendering of a harpie, a creature with the head of a woman and the body of a bird, features minimal line and color but reflects the Surrealist style of the artist. La Ha...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Portrait of Autumn MEDIUM: Lithograph SIGNED: Hand Signed by Salvador Dali EDITION NUMBER: HC 49/65 MEASUREMENTS: 21.23" x 29.1" YEAR: 1980 FRAMED...

In the artist's abstract print series, Cosmos, 2023 by a.muse represents an imaginary cosmos - the universe as a place of longing, dreams, wonder, and ethereal beauty. A 13.75" x 11"...

ANDRE LANSKOY (French / Russian 1902-1976) 1966 Original color lithograph on watermarked Arches paper The title sheet was hand signed in pencil on the justification page by the arti...

Willem de Kooning Annual Spring Invitational Art Exhibition (limited edition, hand signed & numbered by Willem de Kooning), 1979 Offset lithograph (hand signed and numbered) Signed a...

This exquisite lithograph by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), titled Lotus, originates from the historic 1982 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 250, Hommage a Aime et Marguerite Maeght (Trib...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 14, Image 2" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origin...

This exquisite heliogravure after Pierre Soulages (1919–2022), titled Planche No. 2 (Plate No. 2), from the folio Pierre Soulages, Peintres d'aujourd'hui (Pierre Soulages, Painters o...

Over the past 20 years, Michelle Oppenheimer has become well known for composing paintings that capture the imaginative and organic possibilities of abstract watercolor and acrylic. ...

From the rare, Deluxe, hand signed edition of only 100: David Hockney The Prisoner, for Amnesty International, 1977 Color Offset Lithograph Hand signed, numbered 17/100 and inscribed...

Jim Dine The Christmas Print (Burg, 26), 2001 Drypoint, direct gravure, etching over offset lithograph with hand coloring by artist in oil stick, on T.H. Saunders paper, the full she...

This exquisite collotype after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled Homme barbu, de face (Bearded Man, Frontal View), originates from the rare 1957 folio 40 dessins de Picasso en marge ...

Artist: Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Title: Téléphone-homard cybernétique (Michler/Löpsinger 822-831; Field 75-13), Imaginations et Objets du Futur (Cybernetic lobster phone, Imaginatio...

Woodcut on vélin paper. Paper Size: 12.4 x 9.65 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, XXe siècle, Nouvelle série, XXIe Année, N° 13, Noël 19...

Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (after) Title: Untitled (Rinso) Portfolio: 1983/2001 Portfolio I Medium: 9 Color screenprint on paper Year: 2001 Edition: 43/85 Sheet Size: 40" x 40" Sig...

This exquisite heliogravure after Nicolas de Stael (1914–1955), titled Ciel a Honfleur (Sky at Honfleur), from the folio Nicolas de Stael, Peintres d'aujourd'hui (Nicolas de Stael, P...

This exquisite heliogravure after Pierre Soulages (1919–2022), titled Planche No. 5 (Plate No. 5), from the folio Pierre Soulages, Peintres d'aujourd'hui (Pierre Soulages, Painters o...

Alexander CALDER (1898-1976) Red, blue and black balloons Original lithograph, 1973 Signed in the plate On Arches vellum size 78 x 59 cm (c. 29 x 23 in) Very good condition

Andy Warhol To Earl and Camilla, Love Andy Warhol, 1979 Original Heart Drawing held in book with unique dedication to Earl and Camilla McGrath (Signed Twice by Andy Warhol) This uniq...

This exquisite lithograph by Joan Miro (1893–1983), titled Le Soleil Noir (The Black Sun), from the folio Derriere le miroir, No. 151–152, originates from the 1965 edition published ...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Briggs Edward Solomon's artwork is known for its balance and juxtaposition. It is a collaboration of simplistic and contemporary colors. It is subtle, yet bold. It ...

This exquisite lithograph by Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Coeur d’amour epris (Heart of Love Taken), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, Vol. VI, No. 23, originates from...

Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world o...

Kyohei Inukai Life Forces - 1978 Print - Silkscreen   30'' x 22½'' in Edition: signed in pencil and marked 128/200 Since the 1940s, Kyohei Inukai has created his own brand of illusi...

Parapliers the Willow Dipped by Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart from The Mothers of Invention, is part of the Collection of American Masters at the Nordfallen Museum in ...

Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1956. Edition of 200. Printed by Mourlout, Paris.

This exquisite lithograph and stencil by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled Jacqueline à l'étamine (Jacqueline with Gauze), originates from the 1962 folio Pablo Picasso, André Villers...

Pablo Picasso (after) "Femme assise dans un fauteuil" limited edition print on Arches paper, Hand signed by Marina Picasso lower right and numbered 424/500 lower left From the estat...

The root of Guedes's work is located in the MADÍ movement, of Argentine origin and little repercussion in Spain, which attaches great importance to the tensions that are established ...

This exquisite lithograph by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), titled Forme Orange (Orange Shape), originates from the historic 1958 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 110. Published by Maeght...

This exquisite lithograph by Alexander Calder (1898–1976), titled Sans titre (Untitled), from the folio Derriere le miroir, No. 156, originates from the 1966 edition published by Mae...

Colorful dots, lines and squares in bright blue, pink, green, lilac and yellow in wood grain form a totem against a lavender purple background. This jubilant take on Cubism features ...

Silkscreen on Patapar printing parchment paper. Paper Size: 10.125 x 10.125 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Jasper Johns, Screenprints...

Keith Haring Lithograph 1982: Double-sided lithographic insert from the seminal spiral bound, 1982 Tony Shafrazi catalog published on the occasion of Haring's first gallery solo exhi...

Victor Vasarely (Hungarian/French, 1906-1997) Enigma, Four Blue Spheres Serigraph Sight: 25 3/4 x 25 3/4 in. Framed: 34 1/3 x 33 1/2 x 1 in. Numbered lower left: 74/125 Signed lower ...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled L’Ecuyere et le clown (The Equestrienne and the Clown), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, La Comedie Humai...

Screen print realized by Antonio Vangelli in the mid-20th Century. Edition of 17/30, hand signed and numbered in pencil. Includes a blue wooden frame cm. 74x53.5 Very good condition.

Artist: Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Title: Antiombrelle à atomiseurs de liquides (Michler/Löpsinger 822-831; Field 75-13), Imaginations et Objets du Futur (Liquid atomizer anti-shade, ...

Etching on vélin de Rives BFK paper. Paper Size: 11.5 x 9 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Lysistrata, 1934. Published by The Limited E...

Alexander Calder Lithograph c. 1971 from Derrière le miroir: Lithograph in colors; 15 x 11 inches. Very good overall vintage condition; well-preseved. Unsigned from an edition of un...

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

This exquisite lithograph and pochoir by Joan Miro (1893–1983), titled Femme et oiseau dans la nuit (Woman and Bird in the Night), from the album XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie No. 8, or...

large scale photograph capturing the soothing tones of nature's calming blue hour color palette Seascape I by Frank Schott 48 x 64 inches / 122cm x 162cm signed edition of 7 30 x 40 inches / 76cm x 102cm signed edition of 25 archival fine art pigment print signed & numbered by artist on certificate label ------------------------- Frank Schott grew up in Germany and attended the prestigious Academy of Arts in Cologne, studying under Professor Arno Jansen, who was an early influence. Moving to California in 1998, Schott's work has evolved to include the epic landscapes and deserts of the American West as well as architectural, conceptual and more formal environments from both home and his travels. Influenced by a number of photographic peers and precursors such as Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, William Eggleston and Joel Sternfeld, Schott's images successfully blend technical, conceptual and formal rigor with a decisive sense of composition and color. Schott's images have an iconic sensibility and give us a bird's eye view onto humanity and its constructs. The specific is edged towards the abstract, often revealing the compelling and disjunctive moment where nature meets man. Frank Schott was born in Cologne, Germany in 1962. He currently lives and works in San Francisco. _________________________ Edition EKTAlux publishes an evolving curated selection of collectable large-scale photography in strictly limited editions, working closely with each artist to guarantee state-of-the-art museum level print and framing quality. Custom / larger print sizes available on request Images can be printed with white border ( 2in L prints / 4in XL prints )