Thelma Appel
Meeting Plaza, 2018
25 Color Silkscreen on 320 Gram Coventry paper with full margins and deckled edges.
Accompanied by ARTIST SIGNED, gallery issued Certificate of Authenticity (COA) - hand signed by BOTH the artist and gallery director
23.5" (vertical) x 29.25" (horizontal)
Hand signed, titled, annotated & dated on the lower right front - a rare Artists Proof, aside from the limited edition of 75
Unframed
This magnificent silkscreen, Meeting Plaza is signed, dated and numbered in graphite pencil on the front from the limited edition of 75. Other examples of this work were exhibited in the 2021 show "New York and No Place Else: Art that Celebrates New York" at the Chashama Foundation, New York, and it was also featured in the invitational exhibition "Women on Paper" in April, 2021 at the Sager Reeves Gallery in Columbia, Missouri. "Meeting Plaza" is a place where people from all over the world are always welcome to meet in peace and enjoyment; an exquisite 25-color limited edition silkscreen done in collaboration with master printer Gary Lichtenstein. The work is evocative of New York's Rockefeller Center and the United Nations, but the flags are abstracted, to emphasize international unity, rather than single out any individual country. The artist explained: "I wanted to convey a city that welcomed all nationalities and all people… The flags for me are a counterpoint to the city’s geometric architecture, and their suggested movement and irregular shapes echo the organic morphology of the people below. I painted an evening sky. It is dusk. Nobody is rushing. People are conversing with each other, walking slowly or gathering in small groups enjoying a calm evening in the New York City…I, too, am one of the people converging at the 'Meeting Plaza' ...”
Other examples of "Meeting Plaza" were exhibited in the 2021 show "New York and No Place Else: Art that Celebrates New York" at the Chashama Foundation, New York, and the print was featured in the invitational exhibition "Women on Paper" in April, 2021 at the Sager Reeves Gallery in Columbia, Missouri.
Thelma Appel biography
A co-founder of the Bennington College Summer Painting Workshop, Thelma Appel is a representational and abstract painter who has been working and teaching for more than six decades. Most recently, she was subject of a 50-year career survey (October, 2019 -February 2020) at the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont, entitled Thelma Appel: Abstract/Observed curated by Mara Williams, and she exhibited at the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut which acquired one of her fabric collages for their permanent collection. Thelma Appel was raised in Darjeeling, India and educated in London, England, at St. Martin's School of Art (now Central St. Martins) and Hornsey College of Art before emigrating to the United States in the 1960s. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including the Bennington Museum, the Berkshire Museum in North Adams, Mass., the Children's Museum of the Arts in New York City, the Mattatuck Museum, the Brattleboro Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and the University of Pennsylvania Fine Arts Gallery. In 1974 she was awarded a YADDO Fellowship, and in 1975, Thelma Appel, along with the painter Carol Haerer, co-founded the Bennington College Summer Painting Workshop, where many distinguished painters of the day, both abstract and representational, conducted master classes. Among them were Neil Welliver, John Button, Alice Neel, Larry Poons, Friedel Dzubas, Stanley Boxer, Elizabeth Murray and Doug Ohlson – a program that continued until 1980. She has also taught drawing at Parsons School of Design, painting at Southern Vermont College and at the University of Connecticut. Appel’s work has been presented at Art on Paper, Texas Contemporary, Market Art & Design and Art New York art fairs and has been exhibited at
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