Todd Smith

Square Variables XII

1972

This is a hand signed in pencil, vintage, limited edition lithograph modern art print, printed in Switzerland on Rives French art paper in 1968. in vivid shades of red, yellow and or...

This is a hand signed in pencil, vintage, limited edition lithograph modern art print, printed in Switzerland on Rives French art paper in 1968. in shades of blue, green, yellow. Jean Carzou (Armenian: Ժան Գառզու, 1 January 1907 – 12 August 2000) was a French–Armenian artist, painter, and illustrator, whose work illustrated the novels of Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus. Carzou was born Karnik Zouloumian (Armenian: Գառնիկ Զուլումեան) in Aleppo, Syria to an Armenian family. Carzou later created his name from the first syllables of his name and surname, and added a Parisian nickname, "Jean". He was educated in Cairo, Egypt before moving to Paris in 1924 to study architecture. Carzou belonged to the art movement called "La Jeune Peinture" ("Young Picture") of the School of Paris, with painters like Bernard Buffet, Yves Brayer, Jansem, Jean Carzou, Louis Vuillermoz, Pierre-Henry, Daniel du Janerand, Gaston Sébire, Paul Collomb, Jean Monneret, Jean Joyet and Gaëtan de Rosnay. He started working as a theater set decorator but quickly realized he preferred drawing and painting. In 1938, more than a hundred exhibitions of his works were organized in Paris, in the French provinces and abroad. In 1949, he received the coveted Hallmark prize. Carzou, like his contemporaries Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso was part of a generation that witnessed many wars and was deeply affected by it. Carzou made his first lithograph in 1951 and was prolific in both the lithographic and etching medium. He had solo exhibitions throughout the world and was elected to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1977. In 1952, he created costumes and sceneries for Les Indes Galantes of Rameau at the Opéra de Paris. He continued with Le Loup (1953) for "Les Ballets" of Roland Petit, Giselle (1954) and Athalie (1955) at the Opéra and "La Comédie française". Carzou mastered a number of mediums, though his line drawing and engraving would become well known as illustrations for some of the 20th century's most revered writers, including Hemingway, Albert Camus, Ionesco and Rimbaud. Carzou produced stunning work of painted glass and porcelain, in pencils, gauche and pastels as well as oil painting, often choosing to work on textured or irregular fabrics and papers rather than traditional canvas. Carzou was elected a member of the Institut de France, Académie des beaux-arts, succeeding in the seat left vacant by the death of painter Jean Bouchaud in 1977. He was also awarded the National Order of Merit of France. Among his closest friends were the painters Daniel du Janerand, Gabriel Deschamps, Louis Vuillermoz, Pierre-Henry, André Vignoles, Pierre Gaillardot, Rodolphe Caillaux...

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 Frame included: floated in the original vintage frame Measurements: Framed 30 inches vertical by 22 inches horizontal by .75 inches depth Artwork: 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, and attended classes at the Académie Julian, which numbered Matisse...

Les Revolutions Sceniques du XXe Siecle - I (Cramer 207) Joan Miro, Spanish (1893–1983) Date: 1975 Lithograph Image Size: 12 x 10 inches Size: 14.5 in. x 10 in. (36.83 cm x 25.4 cm) ...