1980s Abstract Prints

Rare Keith Haring, original poster for the Kutztown Connection Benefit Performances, 1984 Silkscreen poster 14 × 9 inches Unframed, unsigned and unnumbered Literature/References: Kei...

A print from John Chamberlain's Suite "Ten Coconuts". Although known widely for his sculptural work, John Chamberlain was a prolific printmaker. The etching is hand-signed and number...

Artist: Georgette Batlle Title: Collage Elements III Year: 1980 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 125 Size: 44 x 30 in. (111.76 x 76.2 cm)

Woodcut and screenprint in colours, 1987, on Arches wove paper, signed and dated in pencil from the edition of 75, published by Parasol Press, Ltd., New York, from The Brooklyn Acade...

Helen Frankenthaler Frankenthaler (Hand signed and inscribed), 1988 Offset lithograph poster (hand signed and inscribed to renowned collectors) Hand signed and warmly inscribed in ink on the front Frame included: Museum frame with UV plexiglass included Inscribed "to Paul and Joan, love Helen Frankenthaler" (Paul and Joan Gluck were major art collectors) Measurements: Framed 42 inches vertical by 34 inches by 1.75 inches Print 34.5 inches vertical by 27 inches Accompanied by Certificate of Guarantee issued by Alpha 137 Gallery Helen Frankenthaler, A Brief Biography Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow. Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour. Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century. Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others. Select recent important exhibitions have included Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Gagosian, NY, 2013); Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner (Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK, 2014); Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2014–15); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler (Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 2015); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts...

VICTOR VASARELY, Pecs 1908 - Paris 1997 Composition, 1982 Original hand-signed color silkscreen print. (mm.508x508). Bibliography: Marcel Joray, Vasarely Ed. du Griffon, Neuchâtel. P...

This serigraph was created by German artist Jurgen Peters. Peters was a very well known optical artist in the 1970s, he was a contemporary of Victor Vasarely, Yaacov Agam and Briget Riley...

Artist: Jean-Marie Haessle, American (1939 - ) Title: Bermuda Triangle Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 295 Paper Size: 23 ...

A colorful geometric screenprint by American artist Barbara Lynch Zinkel, signed and numbered in pencil. Date: 1980 Medium: Screenprint, signed, ...

Artist: Dennis Oppenheim, American (1938 - 2011) Title: Target Year: 1981 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 150 Size: 41.25 in. x 29.75 in. (104.78 cm x 75.5...

Artist: Elen Sevy, American Title: Extended Life Line I Year: 1980 Medium: Embossed Color Etching, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 300 Image Size: 7 x 36.5 inches Paper Size...

Artist: Darryl Hughto, American (1943 - ) Title: Warm Hearth Year: 1981 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 160 Image Size: 28.2 x 39 inches Size: 30 x...

Artist: John Chamberlain Title: Flashback VII Year: 1981 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 175 Paper Size: 28 x 20 inches

Lithograph on Japon à la main, attached with chine appliqué to vélin d’Arches paper. Paper Size: 21.5 x 17.875 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From th...

Artist: Edvins Strautmanis, Latvian (1933 - ) Title: untitled 1 Year: circa 1980 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 13/200 Size: 30 x 22 inches (76 x 56cm)

Atom mit Lampen III is a contemporary artwork realized by the artist Fifo Stricker in 1985. Mixed colored aquatint and etching.  Hand signed and dated by the artist on the lower ri...

This serigraph was created by German Op artist Herbert Aach. Aach's prints play with geometry and form, and trick the viewer's eyes by juxtaposing bright neon colors. This print is s...

Artist: Edvins Strautmanis, Latvian (1933 - ) Title: untitled 1 Year: circa 1980 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 13/200 Size: 30 x 22 inches (76 x 56cm)

Keith Haring New Music Distribution Service 1986: 1980s music distribution catalog featuring original cover art by Keith Haring. Features Haring pri...

80 x 94 cms (31.5 x 37 ins) Edition of 100

1983 Japanese pearlescent paper 27 × 20 in 68.6 × 50.8 cm Edition of 1000 2 colors printed matter on Japanese Kirabiki Paper

Lithograph and chine appliqué 64.5 x 54 cms (25 3/8 x 21 1/4 ins) Edition 50 Paper: Arches paper; Japanese Gampi handmade paper Other Collaborators: Image transferred from Mylar to...

"Pura Vida" is an original color woodcut signed by Carol Summers. A multi-colored piece shows a waterfall with red flames behind it in the middle of the piece. On the left stands a tree with yellow leaves on a hill. To the right is a rainbow. This is an excellent example of Summer's printmaking, not just because of the technique and imagery, but because it numbered 1 of the edition of 125. In addition, it contains a personal inscription to the Milwaukee gallerist David Barnett, who has championed the work of Summers and produced catalogs of his work. Indeed, this print appears as no. 189 in the David Barnett Gallery's 1988 catalogue raisonné of Summer's woodcuts. Feel free to inquire if you would like to purchase a copy of the catalogue raisonné along with your Carol Summers print. Art: 24.25 x 24.75 in Frame: 36 x 35 in signed lower right titled and inscribed to David [Barnett] lower right edition (1/125) lower right Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision which would have significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind and Arch of Triumph, a new look prevailed. These woodcuts were larger in size and in color. Some incorporated metal leaf in the creation of a collage and Summers even experimented with silkscreening. Editions were now between 20 and 50 prints in number. Most importantly, Summers employed his rubbing technique for the first time in the creation of Fantastic Garden in late 1957. Dark Vision of Xerxes, a benchmark for Summers, was the first woodcut where Summers experimented using mineral spirits as part of his printmaking process. A Fulbright Grant as well as Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation followed soon thereafter, as did faculty positions at colleges and universities primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During this period he married a dancer named Elaine Smithers with whom he had one son, Kyle. Around this same time, along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers pioneered what is now referred to as the “monumental” woodcut. This term was coined in the early 1960s to denote woodcuts that were dramatically bigger than those previously created in earlier years, ones that were limited in size mostly by the size of small hand-presses. While Baskin chose figurative subject matter, serious in nature and rendered with thick, striated lines, Summers rendered much less somber images preferring to emphasize shape and color; his subject matter approached abstraction but was always firmly rooted in the landscape. In addition to working in this new, larger scale, Summers simultaneously refined a printmaking process which would eventually be called the “Carol Summers Method” or the “ Carol Summers Technique”. Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. His woodcuts reveal a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several of his woodcuts throughout his career he has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. The best examples of this are Dream, done in 1965 and the later Flash Flood Escalante, in 2003. In the majority of his woodcuts, Summers makes the blocks slightly larger than the paper so the image and color will bleed off the edge. Before printing, he centers a dry sheet of paper over the top of the cut wood block or blocks, securing it with giant clips. Then he rolls the ink directly on the front of the sheet of paper and pressing down onto the dry wood block or reassembled group of blocks. Summers is technically very proficient; the inks are thoroughly saturated onto the surface of the paper but they do not run into each other. The precision of the color inking in Constantine’s Dream in 1969 and Rainbow Glacier in 1970 has been referred to in various studio handbooks. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly onto the block. However, by following his own method, Summers has avoided the mirror-reversed image of a conventional print and it has given him the control over the precise amount of ink that he wants on the paper. After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which act as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface softening the shapes and diffusing and muting the colors. This produces a unique glow that is a hallmark of the Summers printmaking technique. Unlike the works of other color field artists or modernists of the time, this new technique made Summers’ extreme simplification and flat color areas anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal. By the 1960s, Summers had developed a personal way of coloring and printing and was not afraid of hard work, doing the cutting, inking and pulling himself. In 1964, at the age of 38, Summers’ work was exhibited for a second time at the Museum of Modern Art. This time his work was featured in a one-man show and then as one of MOMA’s two-year traveling exhibitions which toured throughout the United States. In subsequent years, Summers’ works would be exhibited and acquired for the permanent collections of multiple museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Summers’ familiarity with landscapes throughout the world is firsthand. As a navigator-bombardier in the Marines in World War II, he toured the South Pacific and Asia. Following college, travel in Europe and subsequent teaching positions, in 1972, after 47 years on the East Coast, Carol Summers moved permanently to Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. There met his second wife, Joan Ward Toth, a textile artist who died in 1998; and it was here his second son, Ethan was born. During the years that followed this relocation, Summers’ choice of subject matter became more diverse although it retained the positive, mostly life-affirming quality that had existed from the beginning. Images now included moons, comets, both sunny and starry skies, hearts and flowers, all of which, in one way or another, remained tied to the landscape. In the 1980s, from his home and studio in the Santa Cruz mountains, Summers continued to work as an artist supplementing his income by conducting classes and workshops at universities in California and Oregon as well as throughout the Mid and Southwest. He also traveled extensively during this period hiking and camping, often for weeks at a time, throughout the western United States and Canada. Throughout the decade it was not unusual for Summers to backpack alone or with a fellow artist into mountains or back country for six weeks or more at a time. Not surprisingly, the artwork created during this period rarely departed from images of the land, sea and sky. Summers rendered these landscapes in a more representational style than before, however he always kept them somewhat abstract by mixing geometric shapes with organic shapes, irregular in outline. Some of his most critically acknowledged work was created during this period including First Rain, 1985 and The Rolling Sea, 1989. Summers received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Bard College in 1979 and was selected by the United States Information Agency to spend a year conducting painting and printmaking workshops at universities throughout India. Since that original sabbatical, he has returned every year, spending four to eight weeks traveling throughout that country. In the 1990s, interspersed with these journeys to India have been additional treks to the back roads and high country areas of Mexico, Central America, Nepal, China and Japan. Travel to these exotic and faraway places had a profound influence on Summers’ art. Subject matter became more worldly and nonwestern as with From Humla to Dolpo, 1991 or A Former Life of Budha, 1996, for example. Architectural images, such as The Pillars of Hercules, 1990 or The Raja’s Aviary, 1992 became more common. Still life images made a reappearance with Jungle Bouquet in 1997. This was also a period when Summers began using odd-sized paper to further the impact of an image. The 1996 Night, a view of the earth and horizon as it might be seen by an astronaut, is over six feet long and only slightly more than a foot-and-a-half high. From 1999, Revuelta A Vida (Spanish for “Return to Life”) is pie-shaped and covers nearly 18 cubic feet. It was also at this juncture that Summers began to experiment with a somewhat different palette although he retained his love of saturated colors. The 2003 Far Side of Time is a superb example of the new direction taken by this colorist. At the turn of the millennium in 1999, “Carol Summers Woodcuts...

Artist: Robert Morris Title: A Final Tomb for Frank "Jelly" Nash Year: 1980 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 180 Paper Size: 32 x 26 inches Text Reads: A ...

Artist: Jean-Marie Haessle, American (1939 - ) Title: Elena's Dream Year: 1980 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 295 Paper Size: 23 in. x 29 in. (58.42 cm x 7...

Artist: Beth Story Title: Alphabet from the Portfolio: Visual Chemistry Year: 1989 Medium: Digital Print, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 1/10 Image Size: 14.5 x 22 inches Fra...

Bill Graham revisited his old Bronx neighborhood in August, 1986 and, appalled to see that the drug culture had effectively wiped out the local culture, f...

Large scale black and white etching depicting an abstracted pool, at David Hockney’s home in Los Angeles. This hand painted Howard Hodgkin work is i...

Artist: Darryl Hughto, American (1943 - ) Title: Barn Boots Year: 1982 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 180 Image Size: 24 x 38 inches Size: 30 x 42....

Keith Haring crack down! 1986: Vintage original 1986 Keith Haring illustrated Crack Down! benefit program. This folding pamphlet was designed & illustrated by Keith Haring (along with a poster of same), for the 1986 "Crackdown on Crack" concert at New York City’s world...

15 x 38 ins (38.1 x 96.5 cms) Edition of 98 Signature:Signed "Motherwell" in pencil lower right Inscriptions:Numbered in pencil lower right; workshop chop mark lower right; work...

Lithograph on papier Kitakata à la main, mounted on papier Cartiere Enrico Magnani à la main paper, as issued. Paper Size: 23.5 x 19 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as ...

A very good impression of this large, scarce print, color aquatint on white wove Fabriano paper. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 35. Signed and inscribed "artist's proof" ...

"Romeo's Paradise" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right then titled/editioned 130/300 in the lower left with graphite. It...

Artist: Kazuhide Yamazaki (Japanese-American, 1951-2023) Title: "Yellow Alarm Clock Radio" *Signed and dated by Yamazaki in pencil lower right Year: 1981 M...

Water Drops, from The Official Arts Portfolio of the XXIVth Olympiad, Seoul, Korea, 1988. Silkscreen in colors on paper. Hand signed, dated and numbered by the artist. Image size 3...

A very good impression of this color screenprint. One of 25 numbered artist's proofs, aside from the edition of 150. Signed, titled, inscribed "AP" and numbered 25/25 in pencil.

A very good impression of this three-dimensional color lithograph on Rives BFK wove paper, cut-out, glued and mounted on original white plastic base. Signed and numbered 18/75 in red...

Robert Rahway Zakanitch (American b. 1935), Les Delices de Fragonard 1988 Hand signed and numbered from edition of 45 Dimensions: 36.5 X 48 This vibrant work features floral patter...

46.75 x 30.5 ins (118.7 x 77.5 cms) Edition of 70 Signed in pencil lower right. Numbered in pencil lower right; workshop chop mark lower right; workshop number "RM83-718" in pe...

"Finest Hope" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and wrote the edition number, 182/300, in the lower left with graphite...

Scanga, Italo (American, born Italy, 1932-2001). 2CYPRESS. Color Lithograph and woodblock on paper, 1989. Edition of 40, signed, titled, dated, and numbered 18/40, all in pencil. 41 ...

Striking watercolor, gouache and charcoal on heavy white wove paper by important female Czech-American Abstract Expressionist artist and sculptor, Ruth Francken...

Yaacov Agam is an Israeli artist best known for his pioneering of Kinetic Art. Employing light and sound to provide a unique sensorial experience for the viewer, Agam melded formalis...

La melodie acide. original lithograph painting. signed on the stone and numbered 1 to 1500

Michael Rothenstein Little Zoo III, 1990 Screenprint on Velin Arches paper 54 x 45 cm Edition 9 of 100 hand-signed and numbered 9 of 100. published by Flowers Graphics, London in 19...

THE INVITATION is an original limited edition color silkscreen/serigraph created by the Belgian born artist Jessica Rice (1941-2016). THE INVITATION is a modern abstract figurative composition featuring a couple portrait...

Frances Barth, American (1946 - ) - Goro, Year: 1981, Medium: Color Etching, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, Edition: 20/250, Image Size: 9.5 x 15 inches, Size: 22 x 27.5 in...

Vintage Keith Haring Skateboard Deck featuring the artist's most recognized & iconic image, the Crawling Baby. This work originated circa 2013 as a result of the collaboration betwee...

Screen Print in colors on Museum Board, #15 from Edition of 100 Signed and Dated, Lower Right Published by International Images, Inc. Putney, Vermont Provenance: Private Collection,...

Lithograph on papier Kitakata à la main, mounted on papier Cartiere Enrico Magnani à la main paper, as issued. Paper Size: 23.5 x 19 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as ...

Serigraph in colors on paper. Hand signed lower front by Ronnie Cutrone. Hand written HC 4/15, an artist proof edition outside the main edition of 98. Artwork size 30 x 39 inches. Frame size approx 40 x 49 inches. Custom framed...

This original print is hand signed , dated and numbered by the artist with a pencil. This is an edition of 25 prints in Roman numerals. Piero Dorazio (1927-2005) was an Italian pain...

Original lithograph in colours on Arches watermarked paper, with full margins, framed Central panel from the triptych of the same title Signed by the artist in pencil, lower right on...

Oil and silkscreen on canvas Hand signed, numbered, and dated on verso by Robert Indiana. Edition IV/V. Part of a series that Robert Indiana created in support of Barack Obama’s p...

Signed, titled, numbered and dated in pencil Edition: 150 Serigraph on paper Sheet: 22 1/4 x 30"

Hand signed and dated. Edition of 99 prints. Good conditions.

SAM FRANCIS: Limited Signed Deluxe Edition (Hand signed and numbered by Sam Francis), 1982 Deluxe limited edition hardback monograph with cloth boards, held in special slipcase of ts...