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Orientation: Vertical
Sarah Whitehead; The Bank Nun, or the Lady in Black – English School, 19th Cent.
Located in Middletown, NY
A well-colored Victorian portrait of the woman whose ghost is known to haunt the Bank of England and Threadneedle Street.
Lithograph with hand-coloring in watercolor, 9 x 6 1/2 inch...
Category
Early 19th Century English School Figurative Prints
Materials
Watercolor, Handmade Paper, Lithograph
Dufy, Régates, Lettre à mon peintre Raoul Dufy (after)
By Raoul Dufy
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin d'Arches Arjomari paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Lettre à mon peintre Raoul Dufy, 1965. Published by Librairie ...
Category
1960s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Jules Pascin (French, 1885-1930) "Two Women Reclining" Original Etching C.1920
By Jules Pascin
Located in San Francisco, CA
Jules Pascin (French, 1885-1930) "Two Women Reclining" Original Etching C.1920
Plate dimensions 9" wide x 12" high
Frame dimensions 19.5" wide x 26.5" high
Plate signed
The etchi...
Category
Early 20th Century Impressionist Figurative Prints
Materials
Etching
Picasso, Modèle et Grande Tête Sculptée (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Artist: After Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Title: Modèle et Grande Tête Sculptée (after Bloch 170)
Year: 1992
Medium: Reproduced from the original edition using the grain Autotype halft...
Category
1990s Cubist Nude Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Original art deco Monopole Radio mermaid vintage French poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original 1934 Lithograph poster for TSF radio Monopole "une vague de puissance et d'harmonie" (a wave of power and harmony) with the beautiful mermaid strumming her harp. Archival...
Category
1930s Art Deco Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Toulouse-Lautrec, Composition, Images de Lautrec (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin Polifilo paper
Year: 1947
Paper Size: 13.78 x 10.24 inches
Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued
Notes: From the folio, I...
Category
1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Jim Dine Self Portrait in a Flat Cap (weeds) fourth state with plants flowers
By Jim Dine
Located in New York, NY
Self Portrait in a Flat Cap (weeds) fourth state 1974
Etching in black on Apta 501 paper
plate 25.4 x 31.4 cm / 10 x 12⅜ in.
paper 66.0 x 50.8 cm / 26 × 20 in.
Edition 38 with 14 Artist's Proofs
this copy an artist’s proof
Published by Petersburg Press, New York; printed by Alan Uglow and Winston Roeth
Signed, dated and annotated A/P below impression
The fourth state of a series of modifications of Jim Dine’s self portrait...
Category
1970s Pop Art Portrait Prints
Materials
Etching
La Monaca - Lithograph by Umberto Brunelleschi - 1930s
Located in Roma, IT
La Monaca is a color lithograph on ivory paper, created by the Italian artist Umberto Brunelleschi (Montemurlo 1879- Paris 1949).
Illustration for “Tales and Short Stories” by La Fo...
Category
1930s Art Nouveau Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Degas, Famille Cardinal, E. Degas Monotypes (after)
By Edgar Degas
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Engraving on vélin du Marais paper
Year: 1948
Paper Size: 12.25 x 9.125 inches; image size: 9 x 6 inches
Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued
Notes: From the volum...
Category
1940s Impressionist Figurative Prints
Materials
Engraving
We Love To Drink
By Todd White
Located in Toronto, ON
28" x 20.5" Unframed
Limited Edition Giclée with Hand Embellishment of 100
Hand Signed by Todd White
Category
2010s Figurative Prints
Materials
Giclée
Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Apollinaire
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Apollinaire
Artist : Henri MATISSE
13 x 10 inches
Edition: 151/330
References : Duthuit-Matisse Catalogue raisonné 31
MATISSE'S BIOGRAPHY
YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION
Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born in a tiny, tumbledown weaver's cottage on the rue du Chêne Arnaud in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis at eight o'clock in the evening on the last night of the year, 31 December 1869 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis is in the extreme north of France near the Belgian border). The house had two rooms, a beaten earth floor and a leaky roof. Matisse said long afterwards that rain fell through a hole above the bed in which he was born. Matisse’s ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the convulsive social and industrial upheavals of the nineteenth century. Matisse grew up in a world that was still detaching itself from a way of life in some ways unchanged since Roman times. The coming of the railway had put Bohain on the industrial map, but people still traveled everywhere on foot or horseback.
Matisse’s father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. Warmhearted, outgoing, capable and energetic, she was small and sturdily built with the fashionable figure of the period: full breasts and hips, narrow waist, neat ankles and elegant small feet. She had fair skin, broad cheekbones and a wide smile. "My mother had a face with generous features," said her son Henri, who always spoke of her with particular tenderness of the sensitivity. Throughout the forty years of her marriage, she provided unwavering, rocklike support to her husband and her sons. Matisse later said: "My mother loved everything I did." He grew up in nearby Bohain-en-Vermandois, an industrial textile center, until the age of ten, when his father sent him to St. Quentin for lycée.
Anna Heloise worked hard. She ran the section of her husband's shop that sold housepaints, making up the customers' orders and advising on color schemes. The colors evidently left a lasting impression on Henri. The artist himself later said he got his color sense from his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Henri was the couple’s first son.
The young Matisse was an awkward youth who seemed ill-adapted to the rigors of the North; in particular, he hated the gelid winters. He was a pensive child and by his own account he was a dreamy, frail and not outstandingly bright. In later life he never lost his feeling for his native soil, for seeds and growing things he had encountered in his youth. The fancy pigeons he kept in Nice more than half a century after he left home recalled the weavers' pigeon-lofts tucked away behind even the humblest house in Bohain.
Matisse's childhood memories were of a stern upbringing. "Be quick!" "Look out!" "Run along!" "Get cracking!" were the refrains that rang in his ears as a boy. In later years when survival itself depended on habits of thrift and self-denial, the artist prided himself on being a man of the North. When Matisse in turn had children of his own to bring up, he chided himself for any lapse in discipline or open display of tenderness as weakness on his part.
In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. Although he considered law as tedious, he nonetheless passed the bar in 1888 with distinction and began his practice begrudgingly. Once Matisse finished school, his father, a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office.
PAINTING: BEGINNINGS
Matisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during the period of convalescence. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.” Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions. Matisse was so committed to his art that he later extended a warning to his fiancée, Amélie Parayre, whom he later married: “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.” Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. His drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father.
Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. After a discouraging year at the Académie Julian, he left in disgust at the overly perfectionist style of teaching there. Afterwards he trained with Gustave Moreau, an artist who nurtured more progressive leanings. In both studios, as was usual, students drew endless figure studies from life. From Bouguereau, he learned the fundamental lessons of classical painting. His one art-schooled technical standby, almost a fetish, was the plumb line. No matter how odd the angles in any Matisse, the verticals are usually dead true. Moreau was a painter who despised the "art du salon", so Matisse was destined, in a certain sense, to remain an "outcast" of the art world. He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted.
Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters having made four the French still-life master paintings in the Louvre. Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art. His first experimentations earned him a reputation as the rebellious member of his studio classes.
In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime. In 1897 and 1898, he visited the painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh who had been a good friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Matisse also observed Russell's and other artists' stable marriages. This probably influenced him to find in Amélie Noellie Parayre, his future wife, his anchor.
The Dinner Table (1897) was Matisse’s first masterpiece, and he had spent the entire winter working on the oeuvre. Though the Salon displayed the piece, they hung the work in a poor location, disgusted by what they considered its radical, Impressionist aspects.
Caroline Joblaud was Matisse's early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline (also called Camille) gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse's marriage to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted contrary to conventional hostility such arrangements provoked. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life.
MARRIAGE WITH AMÉLIE NOELLIE PARAYRE
The Matisses of Bohain and the Parayres of Beauzelle had outwardly nothing in common, and there was no reason why Matisse and Amélie should ever have met. But in October 1897 Matisse went to a wedding in Paris and happened to sit next to her at the uproarious banquet that followed. There had been no banal flirtation between them, even when the wine flowed, each recognized the other as true metal, and when they got up from the table she held out her hand to Henri Matisse in a way that he never forgot. Matisse at that time was not yet the professorial figure of legend. He was known as a prankster, as a ribald and anti-clerical songster, and as someone who had once broken up a café concert performance just for the hell of it. Amélie's relatives operated at that time within a social, intellectual, and political context of which Matisse had had no previous experience. They stood for free thinking, for the separation of church and state, and for the secularization of the French educational system. Her family, better off that that of Matisse, provided the support he needed for the budding artist. When Matisse married Amélie in January 1898, they had been introduced only three months after.
Amélie's Aunt Noélie and two of her brothers ran a successful women's shop called the Grande Maison des Modes. Before her marriage, Amélie had shown a gift for designing, making, and modeling hats for a fashionable clientele. In June 1899, she found a partner and opened a shop of her own on the rue de Châteaudun. This allowed Henri and herself to live, with Marguerite, in a tiny two-room apartment on the same street. Madame Matisse, fervently loyal, would play a fundamental role in the life and career of the artist for more than 40 years. Marguerite was to become her father's lifetime mainstay
In 1902 disaster struck. Amélie’s parents were disgraced and financially ruined in a spectacular scandal of national scope, as the unsuspecting employees of a woman whose financial empire was based on fraud. Thanks to his early years in a lawyer's office, Matisse was able to busy himself to great effect in the organization of his father-in-law's defense. When all about him lost their heads, burst into tears, and felt more than sorry for themselves, Henri Matisse dealt with their problems one by one. The ordeal had taken its toll, in more than one way. His doctors ordered Matisse to go to Bohain and take two months' complete rest. Amélie had lost both her hat shop and the apartment on the rue de Châteaudun. For the first time, Henri, Amélie and the three children were united in Bohain, having nowhere else to go.
Hillary Spurling, one of Matisse’s biographers, asserts that Amélie’s memories of that public disgrace nurtured a “suspicion of the outside world” that would always mark the Matisse family. The Matisse family formed a kind of hermetic unit which revolved around the artist’s work and profession. They fitted their activities according his breaks and work sessions. Silence was essential. Even during the years when Matisse lived mostly alone in Nice, an annual ritual of unpacking, stretching, framing and hanging ended with the whole family settling down to respond to the paintings. The conference might last several days. Then the dealers were admitted.
Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). He was not always in peace with his family. He wrote that their views were not always in accord “which disturbs me considerably in my work, for which I require the most complete calm and from those how surround me, a serenity that I cannot find here. I intend to move to a village a few league away.” Pierre, his brother, Jean, and Marguerite remained close to their father through every vicissitude, and Matisse, in his last invalid years, was devoted to his several grandchildren.
In 1899, at a time when his paintings displayed rebellious talent but not much clear direction, Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, he selected Jaguar Devouring a Hare a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye. Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations.
Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, "In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most." By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes -- which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves -- Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life.
Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica.
After years in poverty, Matisse went through his "dark period" (1902-03), moved briefly to naturalism, went back to a dark palette and told friends in 1903 that he had lost all desire to paint and had almost decided to give up.
Fortunately, Matisse was able to earn some money painting a frieze for the World Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also traveled extensively in the early 1900s when tourism was still a new idea. Brought on by railroad, steamships, and other forms of transportation that appeared during the industrial revolution, travel became a popular pursuit. As a cultured tourist, he developed his art with regular doses of travel.
FAUVISM
Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work.
In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity .
Matisse hit his stride in the avant-garde art world in the first years of the new decade. He explored the modern art scene through frequent visits to galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Vollard, where he was exposed to work by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh.
Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success. In 16 May 1905 he arrived in the charming Catalan port of Collioure, in the south of France. He soon invited the painter André Derain (1880-1954), 11 years his junior, to join him. By 1905, Matisse was considered spearhead the Fauve movement in France, characterized by its spontaneity and roughness of execution as well as use of raw color straight from the palette to the canvas. Matisse combined pointillist color and Cézanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism - a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes. When the Fauve summer drew to an end, Derain left Collioure with 30 paintings, 20 drawings and some 50 sketches, never to return, while Matisse departed some days later bringing back to Paris 15 finished paintings, 40 aquarelles, over 100 drawings. He returned Collioure in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1911 and 1914. The lure of the sun would prove always to have powers of restoration to the artist throughout his life particularly after periods of great emotional exertion.
When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse's most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves' color "sticks of dynamite." The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse. This picture was bought be was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, a fact which had a very positive effect on Matisse who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work.
Matisse continued his experiments in Collioure, visible in the painting The Open Window and the View of Collioure , also a characteristic work of Fauvism in its raw color and disregard for details. Both of these works of the landscape in the French Mediterranean present a distinct development towards the spontaneous and uninhibited style.
Other than André Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck were also members of the Fauve movement. However, Matisse’s intimate friends among artists were mostly easygoing minor painters, such as Albert Marquet. Matisse’s temperamental aloneness made him prey to vertiginous depressions. He later recalled a breakdown that he underwent in Spain, in 1910: “My bed shook, and from my throat came a little high-pitched cry that I could not stop.”
From the onset of is career women were from one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. His Joy of Life (1906) draws us into the world of hallucinatory vividness composed of nymphs set in an idyllic open fields dressed in pure color and sensual outline. Two women lounge in the sunlight while two more chat on the edge of the forest. One crouches to pick some flowers while her companion weaves a chain of them into her hair. A couple embraces each other while another group engages in a lively round-dance in the distance. In this way, Joy of Life depicts woodland nymphs engaging in a celebration of their life, their womanhood, and their sexuality.
Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means.
Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne.
FAME
The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to deter the rise of Matisse. From 1906 -1917 he lived in Paris and established his home, studio, and school at Hôtel Biron. Among his neighbors is sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer Isadora Duncan. Many of his finest works were created in this period, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. In fact, the aim of Matisse’s art was something less than revolutionary. In 1908, in a famous statement drawn from “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse declared as his ideal an art “for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
Matisse's personal habits were incredibly regular. On a typical day rose early and worked all morning with a second work session after lunch, followed by violin practice, a simple supper (vegetable soup, two hard-boiled eggs, salad and a glass of wine) and an early bedtime.
In 1906, he created a series of 12 lithographs, all variations on the theme of a seated nude. He chose to share his graphic work with the public almost immediately. The lithographs were exhibited at the Druet Gallery in Paris the same year that they were produced, and the woodcuts were shown at the Salon des Independants in the spring of 1907.
In 1907 Appolinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." Notwithstanding newly-won fame, Matisse's work continued to encounter vehement criticism and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Blue Nude was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913. Contrary to the fate of the Impressionists, Matisse and other Fauves were able to exhibit in art galleries. In 1908 Paul Cassirer, the German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, staged an exhibit of Matisse’s works in Berlin. In the same year the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York organized him one-man show in his tiny Manhattan gallery called 291 which effectively introduced Matisse the powerful American art market.
In the first decade of his notoriety as the leader of the Fauves, Matisse was more admired by foreigners than by the French. It was, after all, the Russians and the Americans who acquired significant collections of his early work almost as quickly as it was created. The great Matisses we see in the Paris museums today were mostly acquired after the artist's death in lieu of death duties. It took the French a good deal longer to understand Matisse's greatness-longer, certainly, than the international cadre of aspiring talents that flocked to his classes when he was still one of the most controversial figures in the Paris avant-garde.
In the summer of 1907, Matisse and his wife went on a long trip to italy "for work and Pleasure," visiting Venice and Padua, where they admired Giotto's frescos. In Florence the were the guests of the Steins in their villa in Fiesole. From this base matisse visited Arezzo, to study Piero della Francesca, and Siena, attracted by the early Sienese painters, especially, Duccio.
PICASSO, GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE CONE SISTERS
During the first decade of the 20th century Americans in Paris Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah took keen interest in Matisse's art. In addition, Gertrude Stein's two friends from Baltimore. Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their works.The Cone Sisters acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings.
In April of 1906 during a gathering at the house of the legendary Gertrude Stein, Matisse was introduced to Pablo Picasso who was 11 years younger. Picasso and Matisse were poles apart aesthetically and their life styles were no less so. Matisse was markedly taller and more polished than the stocky, cocky Catalan, was then ruler of the turbulent Paris avant-garde art scene. The two were said to have always been looking over their shoulders at each other. It is well-known that after their rivalry grew, sides were taken. Picasso later said: "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he."
One key difference between their pictorial concepts was that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors.
Gertrude Stein, who loved stirring things up, wrote, "the feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisse-ites became bitter." Although Matisse dryly noted that "our disputes were always friendly," it should be pointed out that Picasso and his friends threw suction-cupped darts at Matisse's 1906 Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon, from 1907). While the rift between the two artists eventually healed, the one between their supporters remained.
ACADEMIE MATISSE IN PARIS & SERGEI SHCHUKIN
In 1909, with the Matisse family lived in a former convent on the Boulevard des Invalides, in Paris, where the artist conducted a painting school. His immense notoriety, which had been confirmed in 1905-06 by Joy of Life, a work which seemed to trash every possible norm of pictorial order and painterly finesse.His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were several of his most loyal students.
Although it lasted for only three years (1908-11), and yet, during its brief existence the Académie Matisse became one of the principal crossroads of modern painting for a number of gifted European and American artists.
Given the reputation Matisse had acquired as the"wild man" of modernist color, it must have come as a shock to some of his early students that the program of instruction he offered was remarkably conservative. As Jean Heiberg, the first Norwegian to enroll in the Académie, later wrote in a memoir: "The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, acquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, Mars and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable."
Among Matisse’s students was Olga Meerson, a Russian Jew who had studied with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich and, already possessed of an elegant style, sought to remake herself under Matisse’s tutelage. Amélie suspected the worst. Perhaps a combination of Amélie’s jealousy and Meerson’s neediness caused a Matisse to end the connection, with bad feeling all around. Meerson moved to Munich, where she married the musician Heinz Pringsheim, a brother-in-law of Thomas Mann. Never having fulfilled her promise as a painter, she committed suicide in Berlin, in 1929. One of Matisse's biographers, with access to much of the artist's correspondence, contends that the artist, after his marriage, rarely, if ever, had sex with models, despite his apparent feelings for many.
Two Russian art collectors stood out at the beginning of the 20th century: the cloth merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and the textile manufacturer Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Both acquired modern French art, developed a sensibility for spotting new trends, and publicized them in Russia.
In this period, Matisse had initiated his fecund association with the Russian textile magnate and visionary collector, Sergei Shchukin. The artist created one of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission. Inspired by a circular dance-- perhaps a sardana - performed by fishermen at Collioure, this painting embodies the clash between the sacred and reality. Human hands link together, but they form a divine spirit. Moreover, Matisse all but abandoned perspective The work ’s flatness emphasizes the idea, colors, and material, a notion that made Matisse a model for Modernists. The other painting commissioned was Music, 1909.
Shchukin was considered by some almost as a co-producer of some of the artist’s greatest works and was strongly commuted to the French painter’s work. Concerning the violent attacks on his friend, the Russian wrote to the artist: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.” By 1914 Shchukin’s house in Moscow contained thirty-seven Matisses. “He always picked the best,” the artist said.
During the political revolution Lenin expropriated Shchukin collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain, in servants’ quarters, as caretaker and guide. He died in Paris, in 1936. The collection is now in the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums
From about 1911 to 1915, Matisse struggled with the ideas of Cubism, an experiment he felt he was "not participating in" because it did not "speak to [his] deeply sensory nature."
MOROCCO
Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He is one of the first painters to take an interest in various forms of “primitive” art. His art was profoundly influenced by Easter art as well.
Matisse first flirted with the idea of visiting Morocco after a trip to the Moorish part of Spain in the winter of 1910. This taste of the Moors incited a flame of hope that there would be greater inspiration to paint in Morocco. Furthermore, well aware of the exotic subjects in Morocco that had engendered a wealth of inspiration for the famous French painter Delacroix when he visited the country over eighty years before, Matisse felt Morocco would stimulate his painting genius in ways Europe could not. He strove for neither the picturesque nor the pornographic.
In Morocco, Matisse seems to have had difficulties finding models who would pose for him, particularly women because of the law of the veil. Only Jewesses and prostitutes were exempt. Luckily, Matisse to have found the prostitute Zorah for the purpose although he did not paint her as a prostitute. Instead, in his first picture of her, Zorah en Jaune, sexual themes are most conspicuously absent from the canvas. As a prostitute used to exposing and flaunting her body, Zorah could have easily been painted nude or with less clothing to show herself off, but instead Matisse chooses to keep her clothed and posed with prudence. Unlike the primitive, nude Western women in the Fauve Joy of Life. Moroccan Zorah is clothed with respect and detail to her finer characteristics. He is developing his ability to paint with awareness of the non-sexual qualities of his subject, a movement away from Fauve women.
Many of Matisse's Moroccan paintings are covered only in the thinnest washes of pigment, as if he wanted the texture of the unpainted canvas to show through so that it would add rawness to the browns and grays.
Matisse's odalisques have been described as "elaborate fictions" in which the artist re-created the image of the Islamic harem using French models posed in his Nice apartment. The fabrics, screens, carpets, furnishings and costuming recalled the exoticism of the "Orient" and provided a theme for Matisse's preoccupation with the figure and elaborate patterns of exotic fabrics.
Although Matisse's interest in textiles are evident in his compositions made during his 1906 trip to Morocco, it didn't begin as a typical European attraction to the exotic. It was already present to him as a descendent of generations of weavers, who was raised among weavers in Bohain-en-Vermandois, which in the 1880's and 90's was a center of production of fancy silks for the Parisian fashion houses. Like virtually all his northern compatriots, he had an inborn appreciation of their texture and design. He understood the properties of weight and hang, he knew how to use pins and paper patterns, and he was supremely confident with scissors.
Matisse was known to be an avid collector of fabrics, from his days as a poor art student in Paris to the latter years of his life, when his Nice studio overflowed with Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colorful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens, and backcloths. Textiles soon became the springboard for his radical experiments with perspective and an art based on decorative patterning and pure harmonies of color and line. When he moved house, he also moved his fabrics, describing them as "my working library." He added to the collection all his life, from markets in Algeria, Morocco and Tahiti to the end-of-season sales of Parisian haute couture.
The revitalizing spirit of Morocco would live on in the artist's imagination until the cutouts of the artist's last years.
AFTER PARIS
Matisse continued to evolve in unexpected directions even though never became an abstract painter (though some of his most adventurous works, such as the View of Notre Dame of 1914 or the Yellow Curtain of 1916 come close). His motifs were always recognizable, and the tension between the subject and the formal aspects of the painting was a central concept of his artistic ideal.
Matisse moved to Nice in 1917 to distance himself from wartime activity, where bright, warm colors showed him "simpler venues which won’t stifle the spirit." His spirit became loyal to the "silver clarity of light" in Nice, and he returned to Paris only for a few months each summer. The years 1917–30 are known as his early Nice period, when his principal subject remained the female figure or an odalisque dressed in oriental costume or in various stages of undress, depicted as standing, seated, or reclining in a luxurious, exotic interior of Matisse's own creation. These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns. They emanate the atmosphere suggestive of a harem.
In 1929, Matisse temporarily suspended easel painting and traveled to America to sit on the jury of the 29th Carnegie International and, in 1930, spent some time in Tahiti and New York as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Merion, Pennsylvania.He was especially thrilled with New York. An important collector of modern art, and owner of the largest Matisse holdings in America, Dr. Albert Barnes of Merion, commissioned the artist to paint a large mural for the two-story picture gallery of his mansion. Matisse chose the subject of the dance, a theme that had preoccupied him since his early Fauve masterpiece Joy of Life.
Americans were prominent among Matisse's patrons throughout his career, beginning with the Steins (Leo Stein bought Joy of Life right out of the Salon in 1906) and including the Cone sisters of Baltimore and the notoriously cantankerous Barnes. The foundational Matisse monograph was written during his lifetime by another American, Alfred Barr. Also important in promoting Matisse's presence before the transatlantic public was the Manhattan gallery founded in 1931 by the artist's son, Pierre, who remained a prominent figure in the New York art world for almost six decades. In addition to his father, he represented Balthus, Calder, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miro, Tanguy and others, many of them also friends.
Throughout his long and productive career, Matisse periodically refreshed his creative energies by turning from painting to drawing, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression. In his lifetime he also produced 12 illustrated books which were known as “livre d’artiste” (artist’s book), a specific type of illustrated book that became common in France around the turn of the century. These books were deluxe, limited editions, meant to be collected and admired as works of art, as well as, read. This process began when Swiss publisher Albert Skira first approached the modern master in 1930 to illustrate the work, Poesies, by 19th century French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé . Matisse responded to Skira’s invitation with great enthusiasm and that summer, devoted most of his attention to the commission while he was residing in Paris. The result was a collection of 29 beautiful etchings, of which the Museum will display 16. The subject matter, like the poems themselves, varies considerably, although many of the images reflect the artist’s vacation to the South Pacific. Matisse’s etchings of Mallarmé’s poems are considered among his greatest works in the print medium. In 1941, again for Skira, Matisse began one of his most complicated and successful printmaking projects, Florilege des Amours de Ronsard, illustrating the love poems of 16th century French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard’s subject and strong imagery lent themselves gracefully to Matisse’s favored themes of fruits, flowers, the female form and portraits. The artist selected the poems himself and translated the work from Renaissance French to contemporary French for the publication of the anthology
DIVORCE & LATE FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
For all his long-lasting friendships with other artists, famous and obscure, Matisse's days and nights were absorbed by solitary labor. Playing the violin seemed a more intimate consolation for decades of critical abuse than the affections of his wife and children.
Although their marriage was still somewhat fragile, the Matisses had decided to stay on in Nice when their lease expired at Place Charles-Félix in the summer of 1938.
Matisse and his wife were separated in 1939 after 41 years when Amélie tried to dismiss the coolly efficient young Lydia Delectorskaya, an orphan refugee from Siberia, who had been hired as Amélie’s companion. However, the Matisses’ marriage ran afoul not of any romantic rival but for the artist’s wish to stand on his own. The first climax came years before in 1913, when Amélie sat more than a hundred times for the Portrait of Madame Matisse. A friend’s diary reported at the time. “Crazy! weeping! By night he recites the Lord’s Prayer! By day he quarrels with his wife!” The portrait, which was the last work to enter Shchukin’s collection, caused Matisse “palpitations, high blood pressure and a constant drumming in his ears.” Such frenzy was not rare when Matisse had difficulty with a painting. He referred to the painting years later in a letter to her as “the one that made you cry, but in which you look so pretty.” Amélie ceded routine leadership of the family to Marguerite. The 1913 portrait was his last painting of her.
Matisse and his wife met the last time to discuss details of their legal separation, in July 1939. One of its key provisions was that everything would be divided equally between the couple.
The meeting took place in Paris at the Gare St. Lazare and lasted thirty minutes, during which Amélie Matisse kept up a flow of small talk while her husband."My wife never looked at me, but I didn't take my eyes off her...," Matisse wrote on the night of that final encounter: "I couldn't get a word out.... I remained as if carved out of wood, swearing never to be caught that way again." "I'm going to try to isolate myself as if I were still absent,'' Matisse announced on his first return to Paris since the official separation from his wife, 'rarely leaving his apartment except for visits to the cinema (his first color film, starring Danny Kaye, was a revelation).''
After her dismissal, Delectorskaya shot herself in the chest with a pistol, remarkably with only a slight effect. Soon after the artist and his wife were legally separated Delectorskaya was back. She arrived with a bouquet of white daisies and blue cornflowers from her Aunt’s garden on July 15th, St Henry’s Day. Their working collaboration was to last right up to Matisse’s death in 1954. Her will throughout was indomitable; she typed, kept records and meticulous accounts and paid the household bills. She also organized Matisse’s correspondence and coordinated his business affairs with an iron grip as well as being his studio assistant and muse. And when called upon, even scoured the countryside on her bike for provisions during the war. Matisse claimed that his entire household came to a standstill in her absence which, in the light of what Lydia accomplished is anything, if not an understatement.
In the face of the family’s icy resentment, the Russian said of Matisse, “He knew how to take possession of people and make them feel they were indispensable. That was how it was for me, and that was how it had been for Mme. Matisse.”
Life with Matisse must have been taxing but it had been Amélie’s chosen vocation, through years of their studio-centered homes. Her central role in the artist's life was security, which Shchukin’s patronage provided, along with a sizable house in Issy-les-Moulineaux, where the family moved in 1909. However, in this period Matisse was increasingly absent. In 1930, his travels took him to the United States, where he was thrilled by New York, and to Tahiti.
Matisse found that Tahiti was "both superb and boring . . . There the weather is beautiful at sunrise and it does not change until night. Such immutable happiness is tiring." He dived off the reefs and never forgot the colors of the madrepores and the absinthe-green water; these appear in cut-outs like Polynesia, 1946, or The Bird and the Shark, 1947, as images of a spectacular and, on the whole, beneficent nature.
In September of 1940 he employed a temporary stand-in for his regular night nurse...
Category
1930s Modern Portrait Prints
Materials
Linocut
Poster Giorgio De Chirico Exhibition - Offset - 1975
Located in Roma, IT
Poster Giorgio De Chirico Exhibition is an offset print artwork representing the exhibition of the painter in Marino Gallery in Rome in Navona's square, held in 1973.
Very good cond...
Category
1970s Pop Art Figurative Prints
Materials
Offset
The Grasses - Lithograph by Vincenzo Tenore - 1870s
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph hand watercolored.
Plate from "Atlante di Botanica popolare ossia Illustrazione di Piante Notevoli di ogni famiglia" (Atlas of popular botany or illustration of notable p...
Category
1870s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
The Ribesiaceae - Lithograph by Vincenzo Tenore - 1870s
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph hand watercolored.
Plate from "Atlante di Botanica popolare ossia Illustrazione di Piante Notevoli di ogni famiglia" (Atlas of popular botany or illustration of notable p...
Category
1870s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Tempest in a Teapot
Located in Greenwich, CT
Tempest in a Teapot is a lithograph on paper, 9.5 x 7.25 inches image size, and initialed 'BD' lower right. From the edition of 395, numbered 162/275 (there were also 100 Roman and ...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Prints and Multiples
Materials
Paper, Lithograph
BLESSING OF THE HOUSE (JUDAICA ART)
By Amram Ebgi
Located in Aventura, FL
Lithograph with foil stamping on paper. Hand signed and numbered by the artist. From the edition of 350.
Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity included. A...
Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Figurative Prints
Materials
Foil
Degas, Seated dancer, removing her slipper, Ten Ballet Sketches (after)
By Edgar Degas
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper
Year: 1945
Paper Size: 17 x 13 inches
Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued
Notes: From the folio, Degas, Ten Balle...
Category
1940s Impressionist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Karel Appel, Little Boy, color lithograph, hand signed and numbered COBRA artist
By Karel Appel
Located in New York, NY
"Little Boy" - charming 1960s silkscreen rarely seen on the market would look perfect in a child's room - or in any room in the house!
Karel Appel
Little ...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Prints
Materials
Lithograph
The Napoleonee - Lithograph by Vincenzo Tenore - 1870s
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph hand watercolored.
Plate from "Atlante di Botanica popolare ossia Illustrazione di Piante Notevoli di ogni famiglia" (Atlas of popular botany or illustration of notable p...
Category
1870s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
"Sister Water" - St Francis of Assisi Linocut
Located in Soquel, CA
"Sister Water" - St Francis of Assisi Linocut
Wood Black pring of St Francis by Italian artist (printer of Assisi) Gastone Vignati (Italian, 20C)...
Category
1990s Baroque Figurative Prints
Materials
Paper, Ink, Linocut
Miró, Composition, (Cramer 249; Mourlot 1258), Joan Miró Lithographs (after)
By Joan Miró
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Joan Miró Lithographs, Volume IV 1981. Published by Maeght Éditeur...
Category
1980s Surrealist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Bad Guy, Abstract Art Giclee Print by Michael Knigin
Located in Long Island City, NY
Michael Knigin, American (1942 - 2011) - Bad Guy, Year: 2006, Medium: Giclee print on paper signed, numbered and dated in pencil, Edition: AP, Image Size: 23.5 x 17.5 inches, Siz...
Category
Early 2000s Abstract Figurative Prints
Materials
Giclée
Picasso, Minotaure Caressant Une Femme (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Artist: After Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Title: Minotaure Caressant Une Femme (after Bloch 191)
Year: 1992
Medium: Reproduced from the ori...
Category
1990s Cubist Nude Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Zodiaco-Cancro - Lithograph by Ossi Czinner - 1980
By Ossi Czinner
Located in Roma, IT
Burin engraving on Magnani-Pescia paper. Paper size 39cmx29,5cm, work size 22cmx17,5cm. Excellent condition, no defects.
OSSI CZINNER - Central European artist, graphic designer an...
Category
1980s Contemporary Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Chagall, Composition, Couleur amour (after)
By Marc Chagall
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph and stencil on vélin papier a la cuve du Moulin Richard de Bas spécialement filigrané pour cette édition paper. Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good conditi...
Category
1950s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Stencil
Colours Of The Night #2 + #4 - 2 Art Prints, 11"x14" Each, Figurative, Women
Located in Mississauga, Ontario
Colours Of The Night #2 and #4: This pair of figurative art prints on paper capture the essence of timeless style. A neutral, atmospheric background evokes an evening-like ambiance. ...
Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Prints
Materials
Paper
Frank Sinatra Hollywood Music Movie Legends 20th Century Oscars Grammys Litho
Located in New York, NY
Frank Sinatra Hollywood Music Movie Legends 20th Century Oscars Grammys Litho
Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003)
Frank Sinatra
Lithograph on heavy paper
Plate Size: 12 3/4 x 9 1/4
Paper Siz...
Category
1970s Performance Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Magnelli, Composition, XXe Siècle (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, XXe Siècle, vol. n°9, 1957. Published and printed under the direct...
Category
1950s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Unknown
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork "Untitled" is a color lithograph by acclaimed Iranian artist Mahmoud Farshchian, born 1930. It is hand signed and numbered 191/250 in p...
Category
Late 20th Century Surrealist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Composition, Cirque (Saphire, N° 44-106)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Cirque, Lithographies Originales. Published by Les Éditions Verve, Paris, under the direction of Tériade, éditeur, Paris; printed by Mourlot Frères, Paris, October 5, 1950. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), "Cirque" is entirely composed, handwritten text and illustrations, of original lithographs by Fernand Léger. This album was produced by Fernand Léger with the collaboration of Tériade and Marguerite Lang. It was completed printing on the presses de Mourlot Frères, on October 5, 1950, for Les Éditions Verve, Paris. The edition of this album includes two CCLXXX examples numbered from I to CCLXXX and XX hors-commerce examples. Numbered from I to XX. All examples, on vélin d'Arches, are signed by the artist [on the colophon].
Catalogue raisonné reference: Léger, F., & Saphire, L. (1978). Fernand Léger : the complete graphic work. Blue Moon Press, 44-106.
History of the edition: Cirque was originally conceived as a collaboration between Fernand Léger and the novelist Henry Miller. At a time when the two were interested in working together, the publisher Efstratios Tériade Léger approached Leger to make prints for an artist’s book. Tériade hoped to publish a series of such books with the circus as the theme. Léger was a circus enthusiast who often used circus images in his paintings. He often went to the Cirque Médrano in Paris and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus...
Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Hölle XXVIII (Field 189-200; M/L 1039-1138), Die Göttliche Komödie
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Woodcut in colors on vélin de Rives BFK paper, mounted on vélin d’Arches support, as issued. Paper size: 13 x 10.375 inches. Inscription: Signed in the block, and unnumbered, as issu...
Category
1970s Surrealist Figurative Prints
Materials
Woodcut
Pop Art Portrait of Kate Moss, Black & White Screen Print
Located in Soquel, CA
Pop Art style portrait of a woman with a likeness to Kate Moss by Marc Foster Grant (American, 20th Century). Unsigned, from a collection of his work...
Category
Late 20th Century Pop Art Portrait Prints
Materials
Paper, Screen
Matisse, Série O, var. 8 (Duthuit 9), Dessins, Thèmes et variations (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin pur fil paper. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Henri Matisse, Dessins, Thèmes et Variations, 19...
Category
1940s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Blue Vase on Hand Made Paper, Gorgeous Pochoir and Relief Signed Ed of 3, Framed
By Ed Baynard
Located in New York, NY
Ed Baynard
Blue Vase on Antique Paper, 2002
Pochoir and relief in colors on vintage handmade paper
Signed, dated and numbered lower right ‘AP 3/4 Ed Baynard 02’. This work is artist'...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Still-life Prints
Materials
Color, Stencil, Lithograph
Freedom and Captivity, Framed Screenprint with Foil by Erte
By Erté
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Erté
Title: Freedom and Captivity
Year: 1982
Medium: Serigraph with Foil Stamping, Signed and Numbered in Pencil
Edition: AP 57/70
Image Size: 25.5 x 18 inches
Size: 32.75 x...
Category
1980s Art Deco Figurative Prints
Materials
Foil
Hölle XVII (Field 189-200; M/L 1039-1138), Die Göttliche Komödie
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Woodcut in colors on vélin de Rives BFK paper, mounted on vélin d’Arches support, as issued. Paper size: 13 x 10.375 inches. Inscription: Signed in the block, and unnumbered, as issu...
Category
1970s Surrealist Figurative Prints
Materials
Woodcut
The Venetian Mast
Located in Storrs, CT
The Venetian Mast. 1879-80. Etching and drypoint. Kennedy catalog 195 state .vi; Glasgow catalog 219 state x/xii. 13 3/8 x 6 3/8. Glasgow records 53 impressions. A fine, atmospheric...
Category
1870s American Impressionist Landscape Prints
Materials
Drypoint, Etching
"Personaje" 1991 Signed Original Silkscreen & Watercolor Proof 16x12in Cubism
Located in Miami, FL
"Juan Sebastian Barbera (Mexico, 1964)
'Personaje', 1991
Silkscreen and Watercolor on paper Velin Arches 300 g.
15.8 x 11.9 in. (40 x 30 cm.)
ID...
Category
1990s Contemporary Portrait Prints
Materials
Screen, Watercolor
La Perruque d'argent (Juffermans 6), Van Dongen, Kees van Dongen
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Van Dongen, 1925. Published by Henri Floury, Paris; printed by Pierre Dumont, Pa...
Category
1920s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
La Ley de Fugas (Shot for Fleeing from the Law) — Anti-Fascist Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Helios Gomez, 'La Ley de Fugas (Shot for Fleeing from the Law)', letterpress, 1929-1930. Signed in the matrix, lower left and numbered '15', upper left corner. Letterpress relief print after the original drawing, with text in black ink on buff, wove paper; the full sheet with margins. Slight toning at the sheet edges, otherwise in very good condition. From the vintage suite of 23 numbered prints, titled in five languages with Spanish verses in linotype. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
As published in 'Días de Ira' (Days of Wrath), a portfolio of 23 drawings and poems on the “Spanish White Terror” by Spanish artist Helios Gómez, his first publication. Accompanied by an introduction by the 'Socialist International' and with a foreword by Romain Rolland. Printed in Berlín in 1930.
Image size 7 3/4 x 5 7/16 inches; sheet size 12 7/8 x 9 1/4 inches.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
"Free art from representational conventions and make it live from its own dynamism; make the spectator feel the emotion of an idea thanks to pure abstract plastic art: that is, in short, my artistic aspiration... I wanted to touch the people through art".
— Helios Gómez.
Helios Gómez (1905–1956) was born in Triana, Seville, into a working-class Calé (gypsy) family. He received his training at the Seville Industrial Arts and Crafts School and the Cartuja factory as a painter and decorator of ceramics. His initial works were published in the anarchist Páginas Libres, and he illustrated books by local authors like Rafael Laffon and Felipe Alaiz. In 1925, he showcased his work for the first time at the Kursaal in Seville, followed by exhibitions in Madrid at the Ateneo and in Barcelona at the Dalmau Gallery the subsequent year.
Gómez became increasingly aware of the need for political change, aligning himself with anarchist groups and committing to express his political beliefs through his art, writing, and speeches. His artistic career allowed him some acceptance in broader Spanish society, which still primarily viewed Romani identity as acceptable only through creative expression. Unfortunately, anti-Romani sentiment persisted, reflected in critical reviews and media coverage.
His early illustrations for anarchist writer Felipe Alaiz and exhibitions at radical spaces like Café Kursaal marked the beginning of his activism. In 1927, due to his political involvement, he had to flee Spain and travel across Western Europe, connecting with avant-garde art movements and the labor movement. This experience significantly influenced his work, which incorporated elements of cubism, expressionism, and futurism. Upon returning to Spain in 1930, he settled in Barcelona and collaborated as a printmaker with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.
Gómez later renounced anarchism and joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), believing that the international communist movement was the most effectively organized force opposing the rise of fascism. He participated in communist rallies and was imprisoned in Barcelona's Model prison. During the Spanish Civil War, he fought with the Communist Party. He gave an interview to the leftist magazine Crónica, where he spoke about the anti-fascist cause and praised the Soviet Union for its integration of Romani people. By 1938, he had rejoined the anarchist movement and worked on the design of the newspaper El Frente. After fleeing the country during the Nationalists' Catalonia Offensive, he was interned in French concentration camps.
In the aftermath of the war, as details of the Romani Holocaust started to emerge, he embraced his Romani identity more openly, especially after his imprisonment under the Franco dictatorship. He spent time in Model prison from 1945 to 1946 and again from 1948 to 1954, during which he focused on writing. He produced two essays, including one on Romani art...
Category
1920s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Black and White
Picasso, Composition, Les Bleus de Barcelone (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph and stencil with gouache and pastel inks on vélin de Rives paper, archivally hinged on vélin de Rives backing sheet, as issued. Inscription: signed in the plate and unnumb...
Category
1960s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Stencil
Composition (Vallier 137), Résurrection de l'oiseau, Georges Braque
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin vélin de Rives paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: from the folio, Résurrection de l'oiseau, Georges Braque, 1958. Publ...
Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Original Switzerland mid-century modern vintage travel poster
By Kurt Wirth
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Switzerland” vintage travel poster. Archival linen backed in excellent condition, Grade A, ready to frame. The images shown...
Category
1960s American Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Flowering Iris & Other Botanicals: Framed 17th C. Besler Hand-colored Engraving
Located in Alamo, CA
This is a hand-colored copper-plate engraving entitled "I. Spatula foetida - II. Caucalis Dodonei - III. Cruciata", depicting three flowering plants, including an Iris, from Basilius Besler's landmark work, Hortus Eystettensis (Garden at Eichstatt), first published in 1613 in Eichstatt, Germany near Nuremberg and later in 1640 and 1713.
This beautiful hand-colored botanical engraving is presented in a gold-colored wood frame with a French mat...
Category
Mid-17th Century Academic Still-life Prints
Materials
Engraving
Homage to the Panthers, signed/n lithograph shown at Art Students League, Framed
Located in New York, NY
This exact work was exhibited at the Art Students League in an important show. (details below)
Elizabeth Catlett
Homage to the Panthers, 1993
Color Lithograph on wove paper with deck...
Category
1990s Realist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
The Elegant Lovers - Lithograph and Stencil, 1959
Located in Paris, IDF
Fernand LÉGER
The elegant lovers , 1959
Original lithograph and stencil
Printed signature in the plate
On vellum Auvergne 50,2 x 40 cm (c. 19,7 x 15,7 Inches)
Published in 1959, under the control of the wife of the artist, Nadia Léger...
Category
1950s Modern Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Stencil
Rare (Historic) Atlantic House, Provincetown - Entre Nous - Chains -offset print
Located in New York, NY
Robert Mapplethorpe
Rare (Historic) Atlantic House, Provincetown - Entre Nous - Chains poster, 1991
Offset lithograph poster
17 × 11 inches
Unframed, unsigned and unnumbered
Accompan...
Category
1990s Pop Art Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Offset
ALICE IN WONDERLAND WHITE RABBIT Hand signed Etching, Female Portrait, Erotica
By Knox Martin
Located in Union City, NJ
Alice In Wonderland:White Rabbit is an original hand made etching by the American abstract painter Knox Martin. Printed in black ink on archival printmaking paper, 100% acid free. Erotic fantastical interpretation of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, when Alice grows and gets stuck in the Rabbit's house. Print size- 18" x 15", Image size - 8.25" x 6.75" Edition size - 50
About the artist-
Knox Martin (1923-2022) was an esteemed New York School painter.
Knox Martin was born in 1923 in Barranquilla, Colombia. He was the son of the aviator, painter, and poet William Knox Martin, the first man to fly over the Andes mountains.
After serving in World War II, Knox Martin attended the Art Students League of New York on the G.I. Bill from 1946-1950, where he studied with Harry Sternberg, Vaclav Vytlacil, Will Barnet, and Morris Kantor.
In 1954, Knox Martin's friend Franz Kline placed a painting of his in the Stable Gallery Annual.
Charles Egan of the renowned Charles Egan Gallery saw Knox Martin's painting at the Stable Gallery and asked Martin to show his work in a one-man show for the tenth anniversary of the Egan Gallery.
Since then, Knox Martin was a celebrated painter, sculptor and muralist. Knox Martin had an extensive exhibition record and his work is in museum, corporate and private collections worldwide. His two best-known murals in NYC are Venus and Woman with Bicycle...
Category
1970s Contemporary Figurative Prints
Materials
Etching
Performing in the Circus - Lithograph by Marc Chagall - 1960s
By Marc Chagall
Located in Roma, IT
Performing in the circus is an original artwork realized in the 1960s by Marc Chagall.
Mixed colored lithograph.
The artwork represents a typical compostion in the Chagall style.
Category
1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
"On Earth as it is in Heaven" Original 1899 Color Lithograph by Alphonse Mucha
Located in Chicago, IL
Alphonse Mucha worked mainly as a poster artist and became an influential figure of Art Nouveau in late 1890s, when poster illustrations were emerging as popular art form and new pri...
Category
1890s Art Nouveau Figurative Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Picasso, Composition, Prints from the Mourlot Press (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin d'Arches paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Prints from the Mourlot Press, 1964. Published by Fernand Mourlot, Par...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Picasso, Composition (Cramer 88), Dans l'Atelier de Picasso (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin d'Arches à la forme savoir paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Dans l'Atelier de Picasso, 1957. Published by Fernan...
Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
Materials
Lithograph
"Self Portrait" original woodcut
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original woodcut. Printed in 1920 for the Deutsche Graphiker der Gegenwart portfolio, and published in Leipzig by Klinkhardt & Biermann in an edition of 500. Catalogue refere...
Category
1910s Expressionist Figurative Prints
Materials
Woodcut
The Last Supper, from The Passion of Christ
By Hendrick Goltzius
Located in Middletown, NY
Engraving on cream laid paper, 8 x 5 3/8 inches (203 x 137 mm), trimmed at the platemark. A fine impression with a Coat of Arms watermark. Second state, after the addition of the Frederick de Witt...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Figurative Prints
Materials
Laid Paper, Engraving
Original "Frou Frou" Centre de L' Affiche French fashion poster Rene Gruau
By René Gruau
Located in Spokane, WA
Original French poster of Rene Gruau's Frou Frou. Centre de L"Affiche; Mairie de Toulouse. Mai and Juin 2002.
Gruau a.k.a. RENATO DE ZAVAGLI.
This original French poster of Rene ...
Category
Early 2000s Feminist Portrait Prints
Materials
Offset
Under the Crescent Moon - Linocut on Paper by Jean Barbe / Mino Maccari - 1945
By Mino Maccari
Located in Roma, IT
Under the Crescent Moon is a black and white linocut on ivory-colored paper, realized in 1945 by Mino Maccari.
Hand-signed with the pseudonym "Jean ...
Category
1940s Figurative Prints
Materials
Linocut
Composition (Vallier 137), Résurrection de l'oiseau, Georges Braque
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin vélin de Rives paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: from the folio, Résurrection de l'oiseau, Georges Braque, 1958. Publ...
Category
1950s Modern Landscape Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Picasso, Composition (Horodisch: N° D5; Orozco N° 17), Feu de Joie (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Woodcut engraving on Vergé Bouffant paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Feu de Joie, 1920. Published and printed by Au Sans Pareil, édi...
Category
1920s Cubist Figurative Prints
Materials
Woodcut