Chester Raymond Miller

Original "Think American" USA World War II vintage poster

1943

Original “Wagon Lits” serigraph poster by the artist Valerio Adami. It was printed in France by GrafiCaza (Michel Caza), one of the finest serigraph companies on woven paper—in exce...

Original WW1 poster: A Wonderful Opportunity for You. Ashore, on leave. United States Navy. A pre-war recruiting lithographic poster features an ebullient sailor going home o...

Original Amtrak Southwest Amtrak … Takes You Clear Across America vintage travel poster. Amtrack … Takes You Clear Across America tr...

Foire de Paris; original lithograph; artist: Albert Solon. Year: 1954. Acid free archival linen backed Size 10.5" x 16 5/8". Excellent condition. Ready to frame The top of this antique poster features the image of the first poster from 1904 in the art nouveau style; and the bottom of the 1954 Foire de Paris where the sails cover part of the earliest poster image. The bottom portion of this design is reflected in its art deco style with the wording of the name of the Foire de Paris reflecting in the water. Original. Linen-backed. The annual Paris Fair was a large international industrial exhibition that attracted not only manufacturers from around the world, but also posterists who vied for the honor of having their design selected as the official poster of the event. For 1954, this poster artist is nostalgic for the turn of the century. He is reminding us that it is the 50th anniversary of the Paris Fair. The vintage poster...

Original Cadiz, Fiestas Tipicas Gaditanas vintage lithograph poster. This fun image is professionally archival linen backed in very good condition, ready to frame. Artist: Ricardo Anaya. The image features a sailboat with a group of colorful people aboard. A pirate, witch, male and female flamingo...

Original Go Greyhound, Washington D. C. vintage travel poster. See your U. .S. A. Leave the driving to us. Conservation linen backed in very good / fine condition. Ready to frame. The image features a statue of a man on a horse in the foreground. In the back is the Capitol dome. A light blue background. The bottom right corner has the emblem of the Greyhound bus...

Harry Shokler used serigraphy to great advantage in this landscape. It's colorful and detailed. It is signed in the image at the lower left. When printmakers began making serigraphs...

The little that is know about the painter and printmaker Stewart Wheeler indicates that most of his career was spent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And...

screenprint printed in color ink on wove paper. New York City subway station interior. Anthony Velonis (1911 – 1997) was an American painter and designer born in New York City who helped introduce the public to silkscreen printing in the early 20th century. While employed under the federal Works Progress Administration, WPA during the Great Depression, Velonis brought the use of silkscreen printing as a fine art form, referred to as the "serigraph," into the mainstream. By his own request, he was not publicly credited for coining the term. He experimented and mastered techniques to print on a wide variety of materials, such as glass, plastics, and metal, thereby expanding the field. In the mid to late 20th century, the silkscreen technique became popular among other artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Velonis was born into a relatively poor background of a Greek immigrant family and grew up in the tenements of New York City. Early on, he took creative inspiration from figures in his life such as his grandfather, an immigrant from the mountains in Greece, who was "an ecclesiastical painter, on Byzantine style." Velonis attended James Monroe High School in The Bronx, where he took on minor artistic roles such as the illustration of his high school yearbook. He eventually received a scholarship to the NYU College of Fine Arts, into which he was both surprised and ecstatic to have been admitted. Around this time he took to painting, watercolor, and sculpture, as well as various other art forms, hoping to find a niche that fit. He attended NYU until 1929, when the Great Depression started in the United States after the stock market crash. Around the year 1932, Velonis became interested in silk screen, together with fellow artist Fritz Brosius, and decided to investigate the practice. Working in his brother's sign shop, Velonis was able to master the silkscreen process. He reminisced in an interview three decades later that doing so was "plenty of fun," and that a lot of technology can be discovered through hard work, more so if it is worked on "little by little." Velonis was hired by Mayor LaGuardia in 1934 to promote the work of New York's city government via posters publicizing city projects. One such project required him to go on a commercial fishing trip to locations including New Bedford and Nantucket for a fortnight, where he primarily took photographs and notes, and made sketches. Afterward, for a period of roughly six months, he was occupied with creating paintings from these records. During this trip, Velonis developed true respect and affinity for the fishermen with whom he traveled, "the relatively uneducated person," in his words. Following this, Velonis began work with the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), an offshoot of the Civil Works Administration (CWA), where he was assigned to serve the different city departments of New York. After the formation of the federal Works Progress Administration, which hired artists and sponsored projects in the arts, he also worked in theater. Velonis began working for the federal WPA in 1935. He kept this position until 1936 or 1938, at which point he began working in the graphic art division of the Federal Art Project, which he ultimately led. Under various elements of the WPA program, many young artists, writers and actors gained employment that helped them survive during the Depression, as well as contributing works that created an artistic legacy for the country. When interviewed in December 1994 by the Library of Congress about his time in the WPA, Velonis reflected that he had greatly enjoyed that period, saying that he liked the "excitement" and "meeting all the other artists with different points of view." He also said in a later interview that "the contact and the dialogue with all those artists and the work that took place was just invaluable." Among the young artists he hired was Edmond Casarella, who later developed an innovative technique using layered cardboard for woodcuts. Velonis introduced silkscreen printing to the Poster Division of the WPA. As he recalled in a 1965 interview: "I suggested that the Poster division would be a lot more productive and useful if they had an auxiliary screen printing project that worked along with them. And apparently this was very favorably received..." As a member of the Federal Art Project, a subdivision of the WPA, Velonis later approached the Public Use of Arts Committee (PUAC) for help in "propagandizing for art in the parks, in the subways, et cetera." Since the Federal Art Project could not be "self-promoting," an outside organization was required to advertise their art more extensively. During his employment with the Federal Art Project, Velonis created nine silkscreen posters for the federal government. Around 1937-1939 Velonis wrote a pamphlet titled "Technical Problems of the Artist: Technique of the Silkscreen Process," which was distributed to art centers run by the WPA around the country. It was considered very influential in encouraging artists to try this relatively inexpensive technique and stimulated printmaking across the country. In 1939, Velonis founded the Creative Printmakers Group, along with three others, including Hyman Warsager. They printed both their own works and those of other artists in their facility. This was considered the most important silkscreen shop of the period. The next year, Velonis founded the National Serigraph Society. It started out with relatively small commercial projects, such as "rather fancy" Christmas cards that were sold to many of the upscale Fifth Avenue shops...

A fine impression with full margins published by Associated American Artists with their information label present - pictured in Art and Popular Religion in Evangelical America, 1815-...

A fine impression of this popular Benton image with good margins.

An original woodblock print dated 1965, titled "Our Town" but signed illegibly.