Federico Castellon

'By the Arks' — Mid-20th Century Surrealism

1941

Karl Eugene Fortess, 'Tanks & Trees', lithograph, c. 1940, edition 100. Signed, titled, and numbered '100/P' in pencil. Inscribed 'For Usui - K.' in the bottom left margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches); a slight crease across the top right sheet corner, well away from the image; otherwise in excellent condition. Image size 13 1/8 x 10 inches; sheet size 17 3/8 x 13 3/16 inches. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Provenance: Estate of Francis Pratt. Francis and her husband Bumpei Usui...

Ian Hugo, 'Together', from the portfolio 'Ten Engravings'. engraving, 1946, edition 50. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '22/50' in pencil. A fine impression, with delicate overall plate tone, on cream wove paper, the full sheet with wide margins (2 7/8 to 5 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. With the blind stamp 'madeleine-claude jobrack EDITIONS', in the bottom right margin. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 5 7/8 x 4 7/8 inches (149 x 124 mm); sheet size 15 x 11 1/8 inches (381 x 283 mm). Collection: Indianapolis Museum of Art. Ian Hugo originally created "Ten Engravings" in 1945 and the portfolio included a foreword by his partner and collaborator, Anais Nin. In 1978, Hugo republished the portfolio with Madeleine-Claude Jobrack, an American master printmaker who studied under Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, Paris, and with Johnny Friedlaender. When Jobrack returned to the States she managed the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio in New York before opening her own printing studio, Madeleine-Claude Jobrak Editions. “The sign of the true artist is one who creates a complete universe, invents new plants, new animals, new figures to transfer to us a new vision of the universe in which dream and reality fuse. Ian Hugo's plants have eyes, the birds have the delicacy of dragonflies, their feathers have the shape of fans. Humor is apparent in every gesture. He uses a fine spider web to give a feeling of flight, speed, lightness. The body of a woman reveals the structure of a leaf, a plant. Wings are moving in a world unified by mythological themes. This is an animated world, humorous and levitating, elusive and decorative, which by its unique forms and shapes gives us the sensation of a rebirth, a liberation from the usual, the familiar, a visit to a new planet.” —Anais Nin, from the forward to the portfolio ‘Ten Engravings’ ABOUT THE ARTIST Ian Hugo was born Hugh Parker Guiler in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1898. His childhood was spent in Puerto Rico—a "tropical paradise," the memory of which stayed with him and surfaced in both his engravings and his films. He attended school in Scotland and graduated from Columbia University where he studied economics and literature. Hugo was working with the National City Bank when he met and married author Anais Nin in 1923. The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Nin's diary and Guiler's artistic aspirations flowered. Guiler feared his business associates would not understand his interests in art and music, let alone those of his wife, so he began a second, creative life as Ian Hugo. Ian and Anais moved to New York in 1939. The following year he took up engraving and etching, working at Stanley William Hayter’s experimental printmaking workshop Atelier 17, established at the New School for Social Research. Hugo began producing surreal images often used to illustrate Nin's books. For Nin, his unwavering love and financial support were indispensable—Hugo was the "fixed center, core... my home, my refuge" (Sept. 16, 1937, Nearer the Moon, The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1937-!939). Fictionalized portraits of Higo and Nin appear in Philip Kaufman's 1990 film drama of a literary love triangle, Henry & June. Inspired by comments that viewers saw motion in his engravings, Hugo took up filmmaking. He asked the avant-garde filmmaker Sasha Hammid for instruction but was told, "Use the camera yourself, make your own mistakes, make your own style." Hugo embarked on an exploration of the film medium as a vehicle to delve into his dreams, his unconscious, and his memories. Without a specific plan, He would collect resonant images, then reorder or superimpose them, seeking a sense of self-connection through the poetic juxtapositions he created. These intuitive explorations resembled the mystical evocations of his engravings, which he described in 1946 as "hieroglyphs of a language in which our unconscious is trying to convey important, urgent messages." In the underwater world of his film ‘Bells of Atlantis,’ the light originates from the world above the surface; it is otherworldly, out of place, yet essential. In ‘Jazz of Lights,’ the street lights of Times Square become in Nin's words, "an ephemeral flow of sensations." This flow that she also calls "phantasmagorical" had a crucial impact on Stan Brakhage, who said that without Jazz of Lights (1954), "there would have been no Anticipation of the Night" his autobiographical film which ushered in a new era of experimental modernist filmmaking. Hugo lived the last two decades of his life in a New York apartment high above street level. In the evenings, surrounded by an electrically illuminated man...

Salvador Dali ( 1904 - 1989 ) Aliyah, Return, O Virgin of Israel, Aliyah suite edition 232/ 250 published Shorewood Press 1968 on Arches paper paper size 25 x 19.63 image size 20....

CREATION is a hand drawn original lithograph(not a photo reproduction or digital print) printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Arches printmaking paper 100% acid free. CREATION is a highly detailed, surreal hand portrait drawing depicting a pair of cupped hands made of stone, seemingly emitting a glow of light. CREATION with its glowing effect expressed from the center evokes a sense of mystery that captivates the viewer into another world of meditative, spiritual consciousness. Print size - 21.5 x 29.5 in., unframed, excellent condition, rare unsigned trial proof aside from the printed edition of 100, printers legend stamped on verso, fine impression, completely hand drawn lithograph by DE ES Schwertberger Year printed - 1979, printed by master printer Joseph Kleineman at JK Fine Art Editions Co., NYC DE ES (DE ES Schwertberger) - Popular Viennese Fantastic Realist artist was born in 1942 in Gresten, Lower Austria, as Dieter Schwertberger. He studied the painting technique of the Old Masters in Vienna under Ernst Fuchs and has been an independent artist since 1962. DE ES lived three years in Switzerland and twelve years in New York City. The painter has been known under the name DE ES since 1972. He currently lives in Vienna. The artist considers himself to be a seeker, who shows what he has found through “the language of the images”. His message of “meaning and transformation” finds clear and intense expression in his paintings through a precise use of space, light and texture. De Es' was the featured artist for Omni magazine...