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Emerson WoelfferUntitled, 19681968
1968
About the Item
This lithograph is by Emerson Woelffer (1914-2003), a noted American abstract artist. The print is untitled, but it depicts a pair of lips, an image that Woellfer used in a number of works in the 1960s. Here are the details:
Lithograph in colors
22-1/2 x 18-1/4 inches (57.2 x 47.0 cm)
Ed. 42/60
Signed, dated (1968) Lower right
Numbered (42/60) lower left
Inscribed with the blindstamp of the printer and the publisher, lower left
Printed by Ernest DeSoto
Published by Collector's Press, San Francisco
The print is in very good never-framed condition with a faint tape stain on the reverse and a very, very faint crease in the lower left corner.
Self-styled “Abstract Surrealist” Emerson Woelffer was an influential teacher and practitioner of a distinct strand of Abstract Expressionism. Drawing influence from László Moholy-Nagy (for whom he worked for seven years), Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Roberto Matta (who encouraged his use of free association), Woelffer developed an abstract style characterized by saturated colors and bold, jagged forms that hinted at symbolism and figuration. “I always work first and think later,” he said. “There is no idea to begin with. I just start and it works or it doesn’t. It’s not about anything like a tree or an apple.” Woelffer taught at several major American art schools, including a stint at Black Mountain College at the invitation of architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller. “He was an American original, a tender tough guy who turned a lot of people on to the beauty of abstract painting,” said Ed Ruscha, a one-time student of Woelffer who also curated a posthumous retrospective for him in 2003. Source: Artsy.
- Creator:Emerson Woelffer (1914 - 2003, American)
- Creation Year:1968
- Dimensions:Height: 22.5 in (57.15 cm)Width: 18.25 in (46.36 cm)Depth: 0.1 in (2.54 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:The print is in very good never-framed condition with a faint tape stain on the reverse and a very, very faint crease in the lower left corner.
- Gallery Location:San Francisco, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: PM02152020-41stDibs: LU66635736192
Emerson Woelffer
Once dubbed “the Grandfather of L.A. Modernism,” the Chicago-born Emerson Seville Woelffer was active as an innovative painter, collagist, and educator throughout his long and prolific career. A pioneering Abstract Expressionist, Woelffer’s brightly colored work with jagged forms reveals Cubist and Surrealist influences. Coming of age in Chicago during the Great Depression, Woelffer appreciated the improvisational nature of jazz music, a sensibility he would later apply to painting through gestural variation, energetic strokes, and a rhythmic use of line. From 1935 to 1938, Woelffer, a high school dropout, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago while employed as a janitor, early evidence of his enduring work ethic. He joined the Works Progress Administration arts program in 1938 as an easel painter, followed by a two-year stint as a topographical draftsman for the United States Air Force. The director of the Chicago Institute of Design, László Moholy-Nagy, invited Woelffer to join the faculty in 1942. His experiences there brought him into contact with the modernist idiom of the day, and his interactions with students caused him to re-examine his own practice. He also exhibited in group shows at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, participated in the Whitney Museum Annual (1949) and won the Pauline Palmer Prize for painting at the Art Institute of Chicago (1948). In 1949 Emerson Woelffer and his wife Dina, a fine art photographer, were invited by Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner to New York before they headed to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Exposure to Pre-Columbian art led Woelffer to incorporate totemic figures and vibrant colors into his abstract paintings. In 1959 Woelffer joined the faculty at the Chouinard Art Institute (later the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles, where he instructed notable emerging artists until 1973 and where he was instrumental in bringing Modernism to LA. Ed Ruscha was one of his students. In 1974, Woelffer was named chair of the art department at the Otis Art Institute (now the Otis School of Art and Design). His tenure lasted until his retirement in 1989, and he was widely admired for his interdisciplinary approach in the classroom. An endowed scholarship fund in his name provides support for promising young artists and designers. Suffering from macular degeneration, Woelffer switched to drawing with white crayon on black paper in his final years of artistic activity. Emerson won a prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1967 and then went to wprk in Europe. Woelffer’s work is represented in the collections of such distinguished institutions as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.
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