Roderick Fletcher Mead
Composition avec cheval en movement, original engraving
1930-1960

About the Item

Roderick Fletcher Mead (American, 1900-1972) was an important painter and printmaker, best known for his surrealist landscapes and figural compositions reminiscent of Pablo Picasso and artists of his circle. Born in South Orange, New Jersey, Mead received his formal training at Yale University where he earned his degree in fine arts, in 1925. Soon after he moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League under the renown Ashcan painter George Luks. From 1927-1929, he was enrolled at the Grand Central School of Art, where he studied watercolor under George Pearse Ennis, then considered the foremost watercolor teacher in New York. Atracted to the avant-garde movements occurring in Europe between the wars, Mead moved his studio to Paris in 1934, soon studying at the workshop of Atelier 17 under its founder, the influential Stanley Willian Hayter. There he built relationships with the many leading artists of Paris during that time, who were also working and studying under Hayter, including Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Max Ernst, and Wassily Kadinsky. Much of Mead's colorful, biomorphic imagery produced with technically advanced techniques learned under Hayter, comes out of his understudy experience. With the looming onset of war, Mead returned to the United States, eventually settling in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where he taught classes and worked for the Potash Company of America, creating their company emblem, and designing their ore refining machines. The late 1950's and 1960's was a period of great output for the artist, where he produced large scale canvases and a variety of prints employing a mixture of techniques, including soft-ground, aquatint, engraving, and lithogrpahy, often depiciting geometric, surrealist forms. Mead's work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York, and the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Creator:

Roderick Fletcher Mead (1900 - 1971, American)

Creation Year:

1930-1960

Dimensions:

Height: 15.5 in (39.37 cm)Width: 9.75 in (24.77 cm)

More Editions & Sizes:

9/60 limited edition Price: $1,100

Medium:

Engraving

Movement & Style:

Surrealist