Fritz Eichenberg

'The Wolf and the Little Kids' — Graphic Modernism

1975-76

Jacques La Grange, 'The Magic Is Ahead, 1870', color woodcut, edition 500, 1934. Signed and numbered '21/500' in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper, wi...

John DePol, 'Magic Hour, Autumn', chiaroscuro wood engraving, 1981, edition 160 in 1983. Signed, dated and titled in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A superb impression, on...

John DePol, 'Floating Crap Game, chiaroscuro wood engraving, 1958, edition 145. Signed, titled, numbered 'Ed. 145' and dated '3/1958'. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, rich ...

Lou Barlow (Louis Breslow), 'On the Beach' (Coney Island) wood engraving, c. 1937, edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. Stamped 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT NYC WPA' in the bottom left margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, with all the fine lines printing clearly, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 3 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Scarce. Image size 11 x 8 1/8 inches; sheet size 16 x 11 3/8 inches. Created during the Great Depression for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York City. Impressions of this work are in the permanent collections of the Illinois State Museum and the New York Public Library. ABOUT THE IMAGE Due to Coney Island's proximity to Manhattan, Brooklyn, and other New York boroughs, it began attracting vacationers in the 1830s and 1840s. Most of the vacationers were wealthy and went by carriage roads and steamship services that reduced travel time from a formerly half-day journey to two hours. By the late 1870s, the development of Coney Island's amusement park attractions and hotels drew people from all social classes. When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company electrified the steam railroads and connected Brooklyn to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island turned rapidly from a resort to an accessible location for day-trippers seeking to escape the summer heat in New York City's tenements. In 1915, the Sea Beach Line was upgraded to a subway line, and the opening of the Stillwell Avenue station in 1919 ushered in Coney Island's busiest era. On the peak summer days, over a million people would travel to Coney Island. In 1937, New York City purchased a 400-foot-wide strip of land along the shoreline to allow the boardwalk to be moved 300 feet inland. At this point, Coney Island was so crowded on summer weekends that parks commissioner Robert Moses...

Julius J. Lankes, 'Cottage in Winter', woodcut, 1919. Signed, dated, and numbered '15' in pencil. Initialed and dated in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white, wove Japan paper, the full sheet with margins (1 1/4 to 2 inches) in excellent condition. Printed by the artist. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 7 7/8 x 7 1/4 inches (200 x 184 mm); sheet size 11 x 9 7/8 inches (279 x 251 mm). Collection: Burchfield Penney Art Center. ABOUT THE ARTIST “I honor him for his realism. The man has feeling. He has that odd quality, so infinitely valuable, the feeling for things, for the reflected life in things.” —Sherwood Anderson, American novelist. Julius John (J.J.) Lankes (1884-1960) was a highly-regarded American illustrator, graphic artist, author, lecturer, costume & scenery designer, and college professor. He is known primarily for his woodcut prints and his artistic collaboration with the poet Robert Frost, a friendship that spanned over forty years. Lankes was born in Buffalo, NY, to parents of German heritage and graduated from the Buffalo Commercial and Electro-Mechanical Institute in 1902. From 1908-1910 he studied at the Art Students League in Buffalo, NY, and from 1912-13 he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Philip Leslie Hale and William McGregor Paxton. He also studied with artists Ernest Fosbery and Mary B.W. Coxe. Lankes made his first woodcut in 1917 and, over the course of his career, produced over 1,300 woodcuts. Lankes produced woodcuts to illustrate Robert Frost's poems as well as other notable authors and poets, including Ellen Glasgow’s ‘Barren Ground’ (1925), Roark Bradford’s ‘John Henry’ (1931), Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Perhaps Women’ (1931), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Peter Tristram Coffin’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1940), Beatrix Potter’s ‘Wag-By-Wall’ (1944) and August William Derleth’s ‘Country Poems’ (1956). He collaborated with his friend Charles Ephraim Burchfield to produce eleven woodcut designs based on Burchfield’s drawings. Lankes also published his own woodcuts, and how-to manuals, and authored articles in numerous magazines and publications. In 1930, Lankes and his Hilton Village neighbor Eager Wood of the Virginia Press collaborated on Virginia Woodcuts, a limited edition volume of 25 prints that featured and supported the preservation of the historic lands of Tidewater, Virginia. Lankes wrote and illustrated A Woodcut Manual, published by Henry Holt in 1932, the first definitive book on the woodcut printmaking medium in America. In 1933, Lankes was persuaded by Frost to accept a position as visiting Professor at Wells College in Aurora, New York. He taught at Wells for seven years. During the World War II years, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as head of technical illustration at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Langley, VA. Lankes’ art association memberships included the Society of American Graphic Artists, the American Artists Professional League, the Prairie Print Makers...

Jacques La Grange, 'Racing in a Storm, 1885', color woodcut, edition 500, 1934. Signed and numbered '21/500' in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper, wit...

This is among the very few prints known by Spanner. It's the epitome of joie de vivre. It is signed, numbered, and annotated 'Hand print,' in pencil. The numbering indicates an edit...

Hooves. 1927. Woodcut. 7 1/2 x 12 (sheet 11 7/8 x 15 1/8). Printed on heavy Japanese mulberry paper. Signed, dated, and titled in pencil. An example of this work is in the collectio...

Elizabeth Catlett “Man” 1975 (The Print Club of Cleveland Publication Number 83, 2005) Woodcut and Color Linocut Printed in 2003 at JK Fine Art Editions Co., Union City, New Jersey Signed and Dated By The Artist Lower Right Titled Lower Left Ed. of 250 Image Size: approx 18 x 12 inches Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) is regarded as one of the most important women artists and African American artists of our time. She believed art could affect social change and that she should be an agent for that change: “I have always wanted my art to service black people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” As an artist and an activist, Catlett highlighted the dignity and courage of motherhood, poverty, and the working class, returning again and again to the subject she understood best—African American women. The work below, entitled, “Man”, is "carved from a block of wood, chiseled like a relief. Catlett, a sculptor as well as a printmaker, carves figures out of wood, and so is extremely familiar with this material. For ‘Man’ she exploits the grain of the wood, allowing to to describe the texture of the skin and form vertical striations, almost scarring the image. Below this intense, three-dimensional visage parades seven boys, printed repetitively from a single linoleum block in a “rainbow roll” that changes from gold to brown. This row of brightly colored figures with bare feet, flat like a string of paper dolls, raise their arms toward the powerful depiction of the troubled man above.” Biography: Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Known for abstract sculpture in bronze and marble as well as prints and paintings, particularly depicting the female figure, Elizabeth Catlett is unique for distilling African American, Native American, and Mexican art in her work. She is "considered by many to be the greatest American black sculptor". . .(Rubinstein 320) Catlett was born in Washington D.C. and later became a Mexican citizen, residing in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico. She spent the last 35 years of her life in Mexico. Her father, a math teacher at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, died before she was born, but the family, including her working mother, lived in the relatively commodious home of his family in DC. Catlett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, where there was much discussion about whether or not black artists should depict their own heritage or embrace European modernism. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940 from the University of Iowa, where she had gone to study with Grant Wood, Regionalist* painter. His teaching dictum was "paint what you know best," and this advice set her on the path of dealing with her own background. She credits Wood with excellent teaching and deep concern for his students, but she had a problem during that time of taking classes from him because black students were not allowed housing in the University's dormitories. Following graduation in 1940, she became Chair of the Art Department at Dillard University in New Orleans. There she successfully lobbied for life classes with nude models, and gained museum admission to black students at a local museum that to that point, had banned their entrance. That same year, her painting Mother and Child, depicting African-American figures won her much recognition. From 1944 to 1946, she taught at the George Washington Carver School, an alternative community school in Harlem that provided instruction for working men and women of the city. From her experiences with these people, she did a series of paintings, prints, and sculptures with the theme "I Am a Negro Woman." In 1946, she received a Rosenwald Fellowship*, and she and her artist husband, Charles White, traveled to Mexico where she became interested in the Mexican working classes. In 1947, she settled permanently in Mexico where she, divorced from White, married artist Francisco Mora...

GUSTAVE BAUMANN (1881 – 1971) THE RUG WEAVER, 1910 (Chamberlain 26) Color woodcut signed in pencil. Unnumbed from an edition 100 as published in the Hills o’ Brown...

FRANCES H. GEARHART and sisters PATTY 1928 Color block print. Titled and signed “the Gearharts” in Frances H. Gearhart’s hand. This is an original color block print from “Let’s Play”, an intended but unpublished children’s book done in collaboration with her sisters.. There were about 24 prints in the series. The printing of the individual prints varies but likely no more than 30 -50. On fibrous japan paper, Image 7 1/2 x 6 ¾ inches. The Generally good condition. Minor soiling in the margins. Small loss upper sheet edge. Full sheet. In 2009, after 81 years, based on the original prints, the book was published by the “California Book...

Barnet, Will. SLEEPING MAN (REST). Szoke 42, Cole 41, Johnson 40. Woodcut, 1937. Edition of 10. Titled "Sleeping Man" at left, and signed at right, both in pencil. This print is usua...