Ben Shahn
For the Sake of A Single Verse by Rainer Maria Rilke
1968

About the Item

Ben Shahn For the Sake of A Single Verse by Rainer Maria Rilke Portfolio of 3 Lithographs on Richard de Bas hand-made paper in Original Box Year: 1968 Edition: 750 Size: 22.5 x 17.75 inches Sheets signed in the stone Portfolio signed and numbered by hand COA included Publisher: Atelier Mourlot, LTD, New York Typography: The Spinal Press Provenance: Private Collection Kansas City, MO Original Portfolio contains 24 Lithographs Included Lithographs: 11, 18, 19 Missing Lithographs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 20 Lithographs are loose as issued. Housed in a half vellum over cloth clamshell. Clamshell is embossed on the front with an image of a hand with a pen. -------------------- Ben Shahn: "I had now long ago found in Rilke the passage that came to mean so much to me. He was a writer about the processes of art who was not telling me what to do, what to think, how to paint. No; he was too engrossed in his own discoveries. He was sharing with me the doubts and the hesitations of art, the probings, the slow emergence of forms. His every line of writing was art, and yet such art was inseparable from its life content. No manifesto could ever tell me more clearly than this one paragraph of Rilke's that art is an emanation from a person; that it is shaped and formed out of the shape and form of that person. In being so acutely personal to him it achieves also a rare universality. Rilke is speaking, (is he not?) to the innermost recesses of the consciousness, an area in which we spend so much of our time and expend so much of our feeling, and yet an area that is so remote from communication with our fellow-beings, an area that is, unhappily, increasingly remote from the reaches of art." ----------- Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents Joshua Hessel and Gittel (Lieberman) Shahn. His father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir. In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel, who had fled Siberia. They settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, where two more siblings were born. His younger brother drowned at age 17. Shahn began his path to becoming an artist in New York, where he was first trained as a lithographer. Shahn's early experiences with lithography and graphic design is apparent in his later prints and paintings which often include the combination of text and image. Shahn's primary medium was egg tempera, popular among social realists. Although Shahn attended New York University as a biology student in 1919, he went on to pursue art at City College in 1921 and then at the National Academy of Design. After his marriage to Tillie Goldstein in 1924, the two traveled through North Africa and then to Europe, where he made "the traditional artist pilgrimage." There he studied great European artists such as Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Contemporaries who would make a profound impact on Shahn's work and career include artists Walker Evans, Diego Rivera and Jean Charlot. Shahn was dissatisfied with the work inspired by his travels, claiming that the pieces were unoriginal. Shahn eventually outgrew his pursuit of European modern art, and redirected his efforts toward a realist style which he used to contribute to social dialogue. The twenty-three gouache paintings of the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti communicated the political concerns of his time, rejecting academic prescriptions for subject matter. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti was exhibited in 1932 and received acclaim from both the public and critics. This series gave Shahn the confidence to cultivate his personal style, regardless of society’s art standards.

Creator:
Ben Shahn (1898-1969, American)
Creation Year:
1968
Dimensions:
Height: 22.5 in (57.15 cm)Width: 17.75 in (45.09 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Movement & Style:
Modern
Period:
1960-1969
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Kansas City, MO
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU60835002421