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Mel Leipzig
Homage to famed modernist sculptor Isaac Witkin, at Grounds for Sculpture Signed

2019

$1,500
£1,162.37
€1,319.05
CA$2,149.89
A$2,361
CHF 1,215.35
MX$28,250.05
NOK 15,474.11
SEK 14,501.55
DKK 9,851.19

About the Item

Mel Leipzig Homage to renowned modernist sculptor Isaac Witkin, at Grounds for Sculpture, 2019 Color Print on Soft Gloss Exhibition Fiber Paper Hand signed, numbered 2/20, titled and dated on lower front 24 × 30 inches Unframed This print was created by renowned artist Mel Leipzig - one of the most celebrated realist painters on the East Coast and beloved in his home state of New Jersey. The work depicted is Isaac Witkin's "Garden State" - a homage to New Jersey in black Zimbabwe granite, currently the centerpiece of the sculpture garden of the sculpture park Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. The female model is the artist's daughter. Recently honored by the New Jersey State Museum, Mel Leipzig was a professor of Art and Art History for more than four decades - an influential educator beloved by generations of students. Now 84 years old, Leipzig is best known for painting portraits of architects and visual artists like Audrey Flack in their natural habitats - their studios. Most recently he gained national prominence for painting and exhibiting with renowned street and graffiti artists to counter the violence in Trenton. He is represented by Gallery Henoch in Chelsea, NYC. The present print, hand signed and numbered, is based on Leipzig's original painting, a homage to the legendary modernist sculptor and fellow New Jersey artist Isaac Witkin, who died suddenly in 2006. A protege of Henry Moore, Witkin is known as the "sculptor's sculptor" and the "artist's artist" - revered for his pure artistry by fellow artists (sculptors and painters alike) and by art historians like Mel Leipzig. Isaac Witkin is one of the most original and masterful sculptors in the modern era. After creating abstract welded steel works in the 1970's, Witkin began working in bronze, ultimately inventing his own sculptural language, by pouring molten metal onto a flat surface or a sand mold to create abstract shapes, a technique he called "drawing" with bronze, or "action sculpture". By 1985, The New York Times wrote that Isaac Witkin "long ago worked his way out of aesthetic debt to such mentors as Anthony Caro and David Smith and into a powerful lyrical expression of his own." Indeed, even though Leipzig is an American realist painter and Witkin a South-African born, London-educated abstract sculptor, Leipzig admired Isaac Witkin, and had always wanted to paint the sculptor in his studio and foundry, located on a blueberry farm in Southern New Jersey. However, Leipzig famously paints only living models, and does not work from photographs. So when Witkin died unexpectedly at the age of 69, Leipzig chose instead to paint the sculptor's daughter, posing in front of her father's opus magnus "Garden State" - done with 73 tons of black Zimbabwe granite - the centerpiece of the resplendent art park Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. This work is pencil signed and numbered by the artist, from the limited edition of only 20. Unframed and in excellent condition. A beautiful composition for collectors of prints, paintings and sculpture - and art about art; a realist portrait of abstract art. A terrific conversation piece: a work by a great painter depicting one by a great sculptor. Measurements: 24 x 30 inches (sheet) 20 7/8 x 26 1/2 inches (image) About Mel Leipzig: Mel Leipzig (b. 1935, Brooklyn, NY) is a Trenton, NJ-based figurative artist. He studied at The Cooper Union in New York City, at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture, and at the Pratt Institute, where he received an MFA in 1972. Some of his notable mentors include Josef Albers, Will Barnet, and Neil Welliver. Over his distinguished career, Leipzig received a Fulbright Grant, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, four grants for painting from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, and one from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, he was elected to the National Academy of Design. He has had over 45 one-person exhibitions, and in 1998, he was the subject of a retrospective at the New Jersey State Museum. Leipzig's works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, and the White House Collection, among others. His paintings are represented in numerous private and corporate collections. Courtesy of Gallery Henoch
  • Creator:
    Mel Leipzig (1935, American)
  • Creation Year:
    2019
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1745217165532

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