Late 20th Century Abstract Prints

Artist: (after) Lee Krasner (American, 1908-1984) Title: "Lee Krasner: A Retrospective - The Museum of Modern Art (Celebration)" *Signed and dated in the plate (printed signature) lo...

Lithograph, 1979 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and annotated HC VIII/XIII Publisher : Maeght Éditeur (Paris) Printer : Arte Adrien Maeght (Paris) Catalog : [Mourlot 1180 p. 10...

Limited edition of 150 pieces, hand signed and numbered. Excellent conditions.

This is a lifetime edition - hand signed and numbered by Jean-Michel Basquiat himself in Basquiat's lifetime. Many younger collectors don't appreciate the difference between the numerous posthumous estate authorized prints...

Lithograph on vélin papel Guarro con filigrana paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: published in 1970 to promote the folio, Tapís De Tarragona, il·lustra...

James Brooks James Brooks at Martha Jackson gallery (rare Abstract Expressionist poster), 1972 Offset Lithograph poster Unsigned, unnumbe...

Joyce Kozloff Pictures and Borders II, 1977 Color lithograph on wove paper Signed, dated, titled and numbered "Artist's Proof XVI" in graphite pencil on the back of the sheet Editions AP-XVI of 50 30 × 22 inches Pencil signed, titled and annotated Artist's Proof XVI on the back; one of XX Artists' Proofs, aside from the regular edition of 50 Published by Judith Solodkin, founder of SOLO Impression, Inc Provenance: Provenance: De-accessioned from the corporate collection of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan Unframed JOYCE KOZLOFF BIOGRAPHY Joyce Kozloff was born in Somerville, New Jersey in 1942. She received a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA in 1964 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1967. Kozloff was a major figure in both the Pattern and Decoration and the Feminist art movements of the 1970s. In 1979, she began to focus on public art, increasing the scale of her installations and expanding the accessibility of her art to reach a wider audience. Kozloff has since executed a number of major commissions in public spaces, including Dreaming: The Passage of Time for the United States Consulate, Art in Embassies Program in Istanbul, Turkey; The Movies: Fantasies and Spectacles for the Los Angeles Metro’s Seventh and Flower Station, CA; Caribbean Festival Arts for P.S. 218, New York, NY; New England Decorative Arts for the Harvard Square Subway Station, Cambridge, MA; and Bay Area Victorian, Bay Area Deco, Bay Area Funk for the International Terminal, San Francisco Airport, CA. Since the early 1990s, Kozloff has utilized mapping as a device for consolidating her enduring interests in history, culture, and the decorative and popular arts. She initially concentrated on cities known to her, onto which patterns and images reflecting their colonial pasts were then overlaid. Subsequent series examined bodies of water and the inaccuracies of early maps from the so-called “Age of Discovery.” In 1999-2000, Kozloff was awarded the Jules Guerin Fellowship / Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Italy. During her yearlong residency abroad Kozloff conceived and completed Targets, a nine-foot walk-in globe in twenty-four sections, each of which is painted with an aerial map of a place that has been bombed by the U.S. in the years since World War II. A 2001 residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy provided the genesis for Boy's Art, a series of twenty-four collaged drawings based on maps, diagrams, and illustrations of historic battles...

ANTONI TAPIES was the maximum representative of Spanish abstract art of the 20th century. His works are represented in museums and foundations around the world. "ELS MESTRES DE CATAL...

Joan Miró Lithographie Originale II Color Lithograph Year: 1981 Size: 12.5 × 9.6 inches Catalogue Raisonné: Cramer 177, Der Lithograph IV, 1969-1972 Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris,...

RICHARD PAUL LOHSE Modulare Ordnungen (one plate), 1976 Silkscreen on velincarton (thin board) Pencil signed and numbered 62/100 on the front Vintage Geneva, Switzerland-made frame w...

Theodore Waddell Osage Sheep State II Year: 1994 Color Lithograph Edition: 30 Papers: Arches Cover, Black Paper Size: 22.5 x 30 inches Image Size: Same Signed and numbered by hand CO...

This complete portfolio is comprised of ten lithographs along with the original slipcase produced for the artist's 1991 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and supplemen...

Joan Miro Surrealist Bird, 1971 Lithograph in colors signed in the plate Printed in Arte workshop, Paris On vellum size 78 x 55 cm (c. 31 x 21.5 in) Very good condition REFERENCE :...

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976) Fiesta, c. 1973 Lithograph in colors Signed lower right Edition: E. A. 20 x 28 inches 35.5 x 37.75 inches, framed One of America's best known ...

Frank Stella (Whitney Museum Exhibited) Shards IVA (Axsom 151), 1982 Lithograph & Silkscreen on Arches Cover Paper (Whitney Museum exhibition label verso of frame) 45 1/2 × 39 1/4 in...

Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992) Three Studies for Self Portrait, c. 1981 Lithograph in colors on Arches wove paper Edition 81/150 with Arabic numbering. There were also 25 H.C. (...

Lithograph on vélin d'Arches paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, XXe San Lazzaro et ses Amis, San Lazzaro et ses amis, hommage au fondat...

Peter Beard The End of the Game (Hand Signed by Peter Beard), 1977 Offset Lithograph Poster (hand signed by Peter Beard and inscribed with a heart) Han...

Andy Warhol (after) Flowers, Galerie Sonnabend announcement invitation card, 1970 Offset lithograph on smooth card, addressed with postmark 7 1/5 × 7 1/5 inches Unframed Instead of observing flowers in nature, Andy Warhol found his botanical inspiration in a 1964 issue of Modern Photography. He transformed a photograph of hibiscus blossoms into a technicolor series of silkscreens, each simply titled Flowers and debuted at the influential Leo Castelli Gallery later that same year. Silkscreens from that exhibition have since sold for over $2 million at auction. While they evoke the Flower Power movement of the 1960s, Warhol’s Flowers have also be interpreted as a symbol of mourning, as the artist created these works just after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination...

From the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original silkscreens that are a definitive survey of the artist...

Karel Appel Looking Around Signed Limited Edition Lithograph 1971 39.25 x 28.25" inches Signed, marked 12/100 and dated 71 Karel Appel is one of the founding members of the CoBrA ...

Through The Ages by Toko Shinoda, black and white signed lithograph calligraphy 11/35 obituary published by CNN March 2021 Celebra...

Mostly Mozart Festival by Dan Christensen, American (1942–2007) Date: 1980 Offset Lithograph (unsigned) Image Size: 42 x 31 inches Size: 46 x 35 in. (116.84 x 88.9 cm)

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...

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

Robert Mangold Multiple Panel Paintings 1973-1976, Edition C, 1992 Suite of nine screenprints on Fabriano paper 11 3/4 x 24 in (2880.4 x 61 cm) Edition of 300

The Spanish Modern and Surrealist artist Joan Miro was one of the great masters of the 20th century. His bold linework and childlike technique set him apart from his contemporaries a...

Hommage a Gerald Kramer Femme qui Marche is a contemporary artwork realized by David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1971. Mixed colored lithograph. Hand signed on the lower right margin Arti...

Color Lithograph on Arches paper realized by Sonia Delaunay in 1972. Hand signed in pencil, dated 72 and numbered 43/90. Prov. Private Collection, Milan. Very good condition.

Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, XXe Siècle, n°49, 1977. Published and printed under the direction ...

Roy Lichtenstein at Modern Art Pavilion, Seattle Art Museum Limited Edition poster, 1976 Offset lithograph Limited Edition of 1000 22 1/2 × 28 inches Unframed, unsigned Publisher Se...

Collotype in colours with collage and hand-colouring Edition 24 of 98 75.8 x 55.8 cm (29.8 x 22 in) Signed with initials and numbered on the front Condition upon request Published by...

Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Title: Femme Assise a la Robe Bleu Year: 1981 Medium: Lithograph on Arches paper Size: 29 x 22 inches Edition: 1000, plus proofs Condition: Good Ins...

Keith Haring Rare Hiroshima Peace Celebration poster (hand signed by Keith Haring), from the Patrick Eddington Collection, 1988 Framed Original offse...

Victor Rosado (Puerto Rican/ American, 1938 - ), "Growing Wild " Edition 45/ 200, Abstract Screen Print Serigraph, 17.38 x 13, Late 20th Centu...

Amaranth Ehrenhalt (American, 1928 - )," Aventurine", Edition D'Artiste, Abstract Expressionist Colored Lithograph signed in Pencil , 30 x 22, Late 20th Century, ca. 1970 Colors: Red, Blue, Purple, Green, Blue Amaranth Roslyn Ehrenhalt is an American painter, sculptor, and writer, who spent the majority of her career living and working in Paris, France. Ehrenhalt is one of the few abstract expressionists from the New York School of the 1950s who is still active today. She now lives and works in New York City. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Amaranth was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she expressed a passion for art, and by the age of twelve, Amaranth was enrolled in a Saturday morning program for artistically gifted children at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, followed a few years later by art classes at Fleisher Art Memorial. Amaranth Ehrenhalt graduated from Olney High School in 1945, and went on to study for one year at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts (now known as the University of Arts, Philadelphia), after which, she was awarded an Honors Scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. While attending PAFA, she simultaneously earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania studying French, English, Psychology, and Art History. From 1949-1951, Amaranth completed additional studies in Art Appreciation via the Barnes Foundation, attending classes afternoon per week. Amaranth Ehrenhalt lived in New York City during the heyday of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. She is officially recognized as part of the second wave of American Abstract Expressionists. She socialized with Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, among others. Her social life revolved around the Cedar Tavern on University Place. Describing life in her fourth floor Greenwich Village walk-up, Amaranth states: “I painted on the floor, not by choice a la Jackson Pollock but for lack of a table. The painter Al Held and sculptor Ronnie Bladen worked at the Door Store and, upon hearing of my predicament, carried a wooden door up four flights of stairs and plopped it on top of the bathtub. From then on, I could work at a more comfortable height.” Amaranth Ehrenhalt traveled to Paris for the first time in the early 1950s, one of many moves between Paris, Philadelphia, and New York. (Amaranth has also lived in Los Angeles, Rome, and Pietrasanta, Italy). Amaranth lived and worked in France and Italy for over 30 years. “I have lived many years in Italy and France and was privileged to know, and sometimes exhibit with many writers and artists who have greatly contributed to modern art, i.e. Giacometti, Sonia Delaunay, who invited me to choose my paint supplies...

Lithograph Optical Pop Art Attrib. Victor Vasarely, 1970s with frame

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983). "Futbol club Barcelona 75º aniversari (1899-1974)". Firmado en plancha y numerado a lápiz. Ejemplar 1107/1500. Cart...

Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Inscription: Signed in the plate, embossed with the official Braniff Flying Colors Collection seal, and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Not...

Artist: Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) Title: Maravillas con Variaciones Acrosticas en el jardin de Miro (Number 12) Year: 1975 Medium: Lithograph, signed in the plate Edition: 150...

Lithograph, 1990 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 30/150 Catalog : [Sorlier 524] 76.00 cm. x 58.00 cm. 29.92 in. x 22.83 in. (paper) 67.00 cm. x 50.00 cm. 26.38 in. ...

Joan Miró Lithographie Originale I Color Lithograph Year: 1981 Size: 12.5 × 9.6 inches Catalogue Raisonné: Cramer 177, Der Lithograph IV, 1969-1972 Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris, ...

Man Ray Alphabet Pour Adultes (Alphabet For Adults), 1970 Silkscreen in colors and lithograph on paper mounted on wood veneer mounted on card stock. Hand Signed. Numbered. Dated. Ha...

Jasper Johns The Drawings of Jasper Johns (hand signed and inscribed by Jasper Johns), 1991 Amazing provenance: Offset lithograph poster (hand signed and inscribed to Frank Martin, former conservator of the Whitney Museum) Hand signed and inscribed by Jasper Johns on the front Frame Included: matted in cream colored matting and held in original vintage frame Jasper Johns signed and inscribed this poster to Jack Martin, former Head Preparator at the Whitney Museum. This print was published by the Whitney Museum of American Art for the exhibition, " The Drawings of Jasper Johns Whitney...

1975 Color Lithograph by Alexander Calder from Our Unfinished Revolution portfolio One of 250 copies, with the printed signature and date on offset paper. This is not pencil signed ...

Peano Curves is an original Serigraph realized by Bruno Munari in 1991. Hand-signed and numbered with pencil by the artist on the lower margin. Excellent condition. Bruno Munari (...

Helen Frankenthaler (after) Frankenthaler: The Darker Palette (autographed and inscribed), 1998 Offset Lithograph print 42 × 35 in hand signed "Frankenthaler" lower left; inscribed a...

Robert Smithson Movie Treatment for Spiral Jetty, Dwan Gallery Poster, 1970 Offset lithograph poster 38 × 22 inches Unframed Rare, historic poster feature...

Artist: Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) Title: Maravillas con Variaciones Acrosticas en el jardin de Miro (Number 16) Year: 1975 Medium: Lithograph, signed in the plate Edition: 150...

Howard Hodgkin In Tangier, 1991 Screenprint in 22 colours on huntsman velvet 300gsm paper Signed with initials HH, numbered (63/72) and dated ('91) in pencil 82 × 86 cm Edition of 7...

A very rare "Hors de Commerce", monumental signed color lithograph by the surrealist Spanish genius Salvador Dali (1904-1989), titled "The Puzzle of Life", 1974. This artwork is a gu...

Adolph Gottlieb Guild Hall is for Everyone, 1970 Rare Abstract Expressionist Offset Lithograph poster Vintage metal Frame included Rare vintage, limited edition, offset lithograph ...

Artist : Romare Bearden Title; Bopping at Birdland (stomp time) Year: 1979 Size: 33 ¼ x 24 inches Lithograph on Arches Paper Edition; Signed in pencil and marked 114/175 (Gelburd/Ros...

Arc Blau is an original contemporary artwork realized by Antoni Tapiès in 1972. Colored etching with carborundum on laid paper. Hand signed on the lower margin. Numbered. Edition ...

Fantasy, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, titled 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...

Artist: Josef Albers Title: Homage to the Square (double) from the Portfolio: Formulation: Articulation (Double Portfolio) Year: 1972 Medium: Screenprint on Mohawk Superfine Bristol ...

etching and aquatint with embossing on Rosaspina paper from a series of 8 Cretti (7 black and 1 white). Hand signed lower right. Edition of 90 prints, plus 15 artist's proofs in Rom...

Alexander Calder McGovern for McGovernment (Signed by BOTH Alexander Calder and George McGovern), 1972 Lithograph on wove paper with deckled edges. Hand signed and Numbered by Calder, and inscribed and signed by George McGovern. Publisher's blind stamp. Pencil signed and numbered 184/200 Published by Styria Studio, New York (with blind stamp) Bibliography: George McGovern & the Democratic Insurgents: The Best Campaign and Political Posters of the Last Fifty Years (University of Nebraska Press), Hal Elliot Wert Frame included Framed in a mus...

Jean Sariano, Algerian/American (1943 - ) - Working Proof, Year: 1979, Medium: Intaglio Etching and Aquatint, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, Image Size: 18.5 x 16.5 i...

Amsterdam IX is an intriguing early career aquatint dry-needle etch print by renowned French-Dutch artist Olivier Julia. It depicts a detail of an old Amsterdam house facade is both ...