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Modern Figurative Prints

MODERN STYLE

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Modern
Campo II (blue line) [polyptych] (1/20)
Located in San Francisco, CA
Rocca Luis César Campo II (blue line) [polyptych], 2023 Serigraph Each of the four pieces is 15.75 x 11.80 in Edition of 20 This serigraph (silkscreen or screen print) is part of a ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Screen

Portrait Man Original French Mourlot Modernist Lithograph 1951 Francoise Gilot
Located in Surfside, FL
Rare vintage original limited edition stone lithograph, printed by Mourlot in Paris, France, on vélin du Marais watermarked paper. this is not signed as issued. This is from a signed...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Paul Jouve (after) - Tiger - Original Engraving
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Paul Jouve (after) - Tiger - Engraving 19 x 14 cm Editions Rombaldi, Paris, 1950. Copy on velin creme de Rives Copper engraving heightened with pochoir.
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving

Torero y Señorita from "Le Carmen des Carmen"
Located in Laguna Beach, CA
A prolific and tireless innovator of art forms, Pablo Picasso impacted the course of 20th-century art with unparalleled magnitude. Inspired by African and Iberian art and developments in the world around him, Picasso contributed significantly to a number of artistic movements, notably Cubism, Surrealism, Neoclassicism, and Expressionism. In 1949 Picasso’s illustrations...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Jean Cocteau - Portrait - Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 Jean Cocteau W...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Jean Cocteau - The Picador - Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: The Picador 1961 Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Printed signature Lithograph made for the portfolio "Gitans et Corridas" published by Soc...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Bengt Lindstrom - Original Handsigned Engraving
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Bengt Lindström - Original Handsigned Engraving The Seven Deadly Sins. 76 x 56 cm Signed in pencil by Bengt Lindström Paris, ABCD, 1976. Original etching in color Limited edition 90 ex. This is the unique copy offered to Claude Manesse, The story of B. Lindström was collected by Frederick Towarnicki, assisted by Agathe Malet-Buisson. The engravings were drawn on the presses of Claude Manesse. Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) Bengt Lindström was born on September 3rd, 1925 in Storsjökapell, a small isolated village in the Swedish province of Norrland. The young child thus grew up in that vast, mythical and harsh expanse of mounts, glistening lakes and endless forests known as Lapland. His father was a primary school teacher who was fond of Lapps and who showed great interest in their ethnic group and culture. The child was only three days old when Lapp King Kroik, his godfather, administered the Baptism of the Earth, where the child is conveyed between two roots of a tree to grant him protection from the Gods. Lapps as well as local lumberjacks would occasionally abandon their silent ways to tell him and reveal the tales, legends and mysteries of the Great White North. 1935-1945 : He left Storsjökapell and headed to Härnösand, where he wrote short science-fiction novellas, became a renowned athlete and began to paint. 1944-1946 : Isaac Grünewald Art School in Stockholm, Sweden. Study drawing with Aksel Jörgensen at the Copenhagen Fine Arts School in Denmark. He realized his first two lithographs, Meditation and Le Modèle Etendu (The Stretched Model). 1947-1952 : He arrived in Paris. He travelled to Italy, where he visited Florence and Assisi, developing a deep fascination for Giotto and Cimabue. He was granted a scholarship by Swedish magazine Aftontidningen, which helped him move into a workshop in Arcueil, France. He began working on mosaics. 1953-1967 : He returned to Paris, once again taking up lithography and engraving, which holds a vital position in his work. He moved into a workshop in Rueil-Malmaison. This was the start of his collaboration with the Rive Gauche Gallery in Paris. London Tooth & Sons Gallery Director M. Cochrane purchased a large number of his works. He left the workshop in Rueil-Malmaison to settle in Savigny-sur-Orge, France. He began taking to figurative art with Masks, Gods and Monsters. He exhibited with the Nouvelle Figuration Group at the Mathias Feld Gallery. He also began working with the Ariel Gallery in Paris. 1968-1978 : Lindström completed a series of 10 lithographs about Scandinavian mythology. He also completed a series of drypoint works. An association with the Protée Gallery in Toulouse, France, led to exhibitions at the Protée Gallery II in Paris starting in 1984. He executed a large mural painting the Grand Hotel in Härnösand, Sweden. He also made two large frescoes for the Nacksta-Sundsvall covered market in Sweden. He took to sharing his working time between the workshop in Savigny-sur-Orge and the one in Sundsvall. He began collaboration that was to last several years with the ABCD Gallery in Paris, which provided exclusive publication for his engravings and strong ink work. Les Hommes du Nord (Men of the North) was the first of the major tapestries. He published a boxed set album, Eddan, Eddan, Eddan, illustrating Scandinavian mythology. Together with Jacques Putman, he completed two editions of bronze sculptures, Les Enfants Sauvages (The Wild Children). 1979-1982 : He worked on glass, making thirty dishes and goblets for renowned Swedish glassmaker Kosta Boda. He painted a car for Volvo, Sweden’s leading car manufacturer. Then, close to his birthplace, he painted gigantic tarpaulins over forty metres high, covering the slopes of the neighbouring Våladalen Mountain, as a protest against the building of a dam. This action caused a sensation and provoked fierce reactions. He also created small painted papier mâché sculptures, Têtes (Heads), as well as some gold and silver jewellery. 1983 : He exhibited seven monumental 3x2.5m works at the Art and History Museum in Stockholm: Les Grands Dieux Ase (The Great Aesir Gods), depicting the gods from Scandinavian mythology: Thor, Odin, Frej, Balder, Ymer, Loki and Unknown God, as well as acrylic paintings about the Valkyries. Les Grands Dieux was ultimately exhibited in a purpose-built chapel adjoining the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in 1996. He completed Thor’s Hammer, a monumental sculpture. 1985-1990 : He lived also in the Alicante region, where Spanish friends found him a new workshop. While there he completed Novelda, an album of lithographs featuring poems by Spanish poet Paco Pastor. He completed a new mural, 5mx5m, for the Västeras Science Institute in Sweden. He then started working with the San Carlo Gallery in Milan, Italy, which coordinated all of the Italian events. Major exhibitions and retrospectives were held in Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Spain. He created two boxed set albums, containing series of 10 aquatints, Monde Autre et Chamanes (Otherworld and Shamans), featuring poems by Michel Perrin. 1991-1994 : He went back to working in black and white, completing some very-large-format works. In Murano, in association with the San Carlo Gallery, he created Grands Verres (Large Glasses), a series of large vases and sculptures made of crystal. He painted Kåtan Mimi, an 8x9m Lapp tent, for the town of Arjeplog in Swedish Lapland. He completed a couple of 2m-high painted polyester sculptures, Lui et Elle (Him and Her). He then made a new series of crystal glasses and sculptures in Murano, Italy. He completed Présence (Presence), a new 3.5x2.7m tapestry for the municipality of Timrå, Sweden. He started on the Grands Initiés (Great Insiders) series, all large format and mixed black and white techniques. He finished the strong series about Norse gods. 1995-1996 : He moved into a new workshop in Paris. A retrospective was held at the Sundsvall Museum in Sweden, and on that occasion he painted a monumental 700-m² canvass, Le Géant sur la montagne (The Giant on the Mountain), which was hung all summer long on the mountain slope facing the town. He went on to complete a suite of six silkscreen prints on the same theme. Then he inaugurated the Y, a monumental sculpture. Lindström then completed Temps Zéro (Zero Time), a watch made for Swatch. One of his works, L’hiver (Winter), made the cover of the first 1996 issue of Telerama, the leading French weekly. In association with Sydkraft Sweden, he painted a fresco for the municipality of Örebro on a 17m-high tank with a surface area of 3,000 m², located at the crossroads of major Swedish motorways, by the entrance to the Åbyverket industrial estate. He also created a 6.5m-high Tången sculpture made of painted concrete in Ånge, which was inaugurated on September 3rd in the presence of their Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden. 1997-1999 : He began working on ceramics in Albisolla, Italy. He also completed a new 30m-high fresco for the town of Örebro, located close to the tank he had painted in 1996 near Åbyverket. The year saw the inauguration of the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in Sweden, which harbours the collection of the Bengt and Michèle Lindström Foundation, featuring the entire engravings collection (about 800 works), as well as a selection of paintings and sculptures. He completed a 4x10m mural in the lobby of the University of Eskilstuna, Sweden, and also completed two monumental frescoes on the Akkats dam and a mural on the power station facing Jokkmokk in Swedish Lapland. 2000-2003 : He painted all of the sides of a semi-articulated lorry for Scania, Sweden’s main truck manufacturer. In Italy, he completed a new series of crystal sculptures with Adriano Bérengo. He finished the Great Prophets, a series of 2x2m oil on canvass works. Swiss publisher Ides et Calendes published a small but luxurious monograph, with text by Françoise Monnin. A notebook was also published, Le Visage dans l’Art de Bengt Lindström (Faces in the Art of Bengt Lindström). He completed a substantial series of large blue acrylic paintings, Femmes (Women). 2003 : Bengt fell ill and was unable to paint, but the exhibitions went on. 2004 : Saw the release of the film by Dag Jonzon and Hans Östbom, produced by Dell’arte AB and Östbom Filmbild, about the life of Bengt Lindström. Entitled Lindström - Le Diable de la couleur et de la forme (Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil), the film was produced thanks to support from Film Västernorrland, Länsstyrelsen Västernorrland and Sveriges Television. It was broadcast on Swedish television channels. That same year, the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre was closed as a result of municipal policy. 2005-2007 : The 6m-high sculpture Le Loup (The Wolf), made for PEAB, was inaugurated in Botkyrka-Stockholm. Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil was screened at the Paris Swedish Cultural Centre and released on DVD. The Michèle and Bengt Lindström Foundation was donated and transferred to the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden, where a special room was prepared to host Les Grands Dieux Ase. Edition of the 1998 Ceramics, created in association with Francis Dellile’s ”La Tuilerie” workshop. The Bengt Lindström Collection was inaugurated at, Murberget, the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden. He illustrated Sinfonietta för Juliana, a collection of poems by Italian poet and art critic Sebastiano Grasso. On January 29th, 2008, Bengt Lindström passed away at his home in Sweden. 2008-2012 : The Fondation Krimaro presents the first volume of the works of Bengt Lindström in his collection. Numerous exhibitions-tribute to the work are presented in major cities in Europe. 2012 : Retrospective - Black and White in the engravings - Museum of Härnösand, Murberget, Sweden. Main exhibitions 1952 Fair Réalités Nouvelles – New realities, Paris, France. 1953 Craven Gallery, Paris, France. 1954 Gummeson Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Fair Salon d’Octobre, Paris, France. 1958 Breteau Gallery, Paris, France. 1959 Autour du Spontanéisme – Around the sontaneity, Stockholm, Sweden. L’Europe Nouvelle – The new Europe, LaUnited Statesnne, Switzerland. 1960 Rive Gauche Gallery, Paris, France. 1961 Tooth Gallery, London, England. Le Zodiaque Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Fair Salon de Mai, Paris, France. 1962 Nouvelle Figuration – New Figuration , Mathias Fels Gallery, Paris, France, 1964 Nord-Sud – North-South, in several cities in Sweden. Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, 15 artists of my generation. Museum of Fine Arts in Gent, Belgium, Figuration-Défiguration – Figuration – Disfigurement. 1965 Rive Gauche Gallery. Paris, France. Nord Gallery, Lille, France. Birch Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark. 1966 Museum of Modern Art, Gothenburg, Sweden. 1967 Veranneman Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, United States. Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 23 peintres in Paris. 1968 Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, followed by six exhibitions until 1976. 1969 La Pochade Gallery, Paris, France. Protée Gallery, Toulouse, France, who exhibited him in Paris, Gallery Protée II, from 1984. 1973 Galliera Museum, Paris, France. 1974 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. 1982 Gallery Protée-Arco, Madrid, Spain and Fair Foire de Cologne, Germany. 1983 Historia Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, The Ase gods and the Valkyries. 1984 Gallery Arcano XXI, Lisbon, Portugal. Gallery Christian Cheneau, Paris, France. Museum Château comtal, Carcassonne, France. 1985 Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. 1986 Gallery Sala Gaspar, Barcelona, Spain. Gallery Juan Mordo-Arco, Madrid, Spain. Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. Museum of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. Gallery Three Continents, New-York, United States. Gallery Protée, Toulouse France, Autour du Roi Lear – Around King Lear. 1987 Gallery Kostel, Paris, France. Gallery Zwirner, Cologne, Germany. Gallery Leu, Rottach-Egern, Germany. 1988 Maison du Lot, Figeac, France. Gallery Protée, Paris, France. Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France 1989 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France, La terre des ancêtres - The Land pf the ancestors. Gallery Protée, Paris, France, Nomads. Gallery Raab, London, England. 1990 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. Centre Culturel de Brest, France. 1991 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. 1992 Archotèque, Saint-Denis, La Réunion, France. Museum of Vesoul, Vesoul, France. Gallery San Carlo, Milan, Italy. 1993 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. Tonnellerie du Cognac Monnet...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving

Landscape with Trees
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork "Landscape with Trees" c.1980 is an original lithograph on wove paper by noted American artist Robert Kipniss, b.1931. It is hand si...
Category

Late 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

La Revue Blanche
Located in Palo Alto, CA
The wife of Thadée Nathanson, the editor of the French art and literary magazine La Revue Blanche, Misia Nathanson is presented here in beautiful form. Wonderfully strong but sparse line work mixed with soft curves and billowing forms are Lautrec signatures, but what is interesting is his respect for Misia is widely apparent. A white fur shawl...
Category

1890s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Lithograph - Flowers
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
after Henri MATISSE (1869-1954) Lithograph after a drawing of 1941 Printed signature and date Book plate from Aragon. Henri Matisse: Dessins, Thèmes et Variations : précédés de "Matisse-en-France". (M. Fabiani: Paris 1943). Vélin Paper Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm (12 x 9") This lithograph is one of a rare edition made during the Second World War (1941 - 1943) by the Fabiani Editions. 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...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

The Violaries - 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 ...
Category

19th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Two blocks from Twenty-Five Nudes by Eric Gill, 1938
Located in Middletown, NY
London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1938. Each a woodblock print on white wove paper, 8 11/16 x 5 1/2 inches (219 x 139 mm), the full sheet. Each image in excellent condition, printed on one...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

JOHN & YOKO
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Of all of Harold Town's (1924-1990) "Superstar" prints, his double portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is one of the most iconic and charming. 1969, the year this lithograph was c...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Bengt Lindstrom - Original Handsigned Engraving
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Bengt Lindström - Original Handsigned Engraving The Seven Deadly Sins. 76 x 56 cm Signed in pencil by Bengt Lindström Paris, ABCD, 1976. Original etching in color Limited edition 90 ex. This is the unique copy offered to Claude Manesse, The story of B. Lindström was collected by Frederick Towarnicki, assisted by Agathe Malet-Buisson. The engravings were drawn on the presses of Claude Manesse. Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) Bengt Lindström was born on September 3rd, 1925 in Storsjökapell, a small isolated village in the Swedish province of Norrland. The young child thus grew up in that vast, mythical and harsh expanse of mounts, glistening lakes and endless forests known as Lapland. His father was a primary school teacher who was fond of Lapps and who showed great interest in their ethnic group and culture. The child was only three days old when Lapp King Kroik, his godfather, administered the Baptism of the Earth, where the child is conveyed between two roots of a tree to grant him protection from the Gods. Lapps as well as local lumberjacks would occasionally abandon their silent ways to tell him and reveal the tales, legends and mysteries of the Great White North. 1935-1945 : He left Storsjökapell and headed to Härnösand, where he wrote short science-fiction novellas, became a renowned athlete and began to paint. 1944-1946 : Isaac Grünewald Art School in Stockholm, Sweden. Study drawing with Aksel Jörgensen at the Copenhagen Fine Arts School in Denmark. He realized his first two lithographs, Meditation and Le Modèle Etendu (The Stretched Model). 1947-1952 : He arrived in Paris. He travelled to Italy, where he visited Florence and Assisi, developing a deep fascination for Giotto and Cimabue. He was granted a scholarship by Swedish magazine Aftontidningen, which helped him move into a workshop in Arcueil, France. He began working on mosaics. 1953-1967 : He returned to Paris, once again taking up lithography and engraving, which holds a vital position in his work. He moved into a workshop in Rueil-Malmaison. This was the start of his collaboration with the Rive Gauche Gallery in Paris. London Tooth & Sons Gallery Director M. Cochrane purchased a large number of his works. He left the workshop in Rueil-Malmaison to settle in Savigny-sur-Orge, France. He began taking to figurative art with Masks, Gods and Monsters. He exhibited with the Nouvelle Figuration Group at the Mathias Feld Gallery. He also began working with the Ariel Gallery in Paris. 1968-1978 : Lindström completed a series of 10 lithographs about Scandinavian mythology. He also completed a series of drypoint works. An association with the Protée Gallery in Toulouse, France, led to exhibitions at the Protée Gallery II in Paris starting in 1984. He executed a large mural painting the Grand Hotel in Härnösand, Sweden. He also made two large frescoes for the Nacksta-Sundsvall covered market in Sweden. He took to sharing his working time between the workshop in Savigny-sur-Orge and the one in Sundsvall. He began collaboration that was to last several years with the ABCD Gallery in Paris, which provided exclusive publication for his engravings and strong ink work. Les Hommes du Nord (Men of the North) was the first of the major tapestries. He published a boxed set album, Eddan, Eddan, Eddan, illustrating Scandinavian mythology. Together with Jacques Putman, he completed two editions of bronze sculptures, Les Enfants Sauvages (The Wild Children). 1979-1982 : He worked on glass, making thirty dishes and goblets for renowned Swedish glassmaker Kosta Boda. He painted a car for Volvo, Sweden’s leading car manufacturer. Then, close to his birthplace, he painted gigantic tarpaulins over forty metres high, covering the slopes of the neighbouring Våladalen Mountain, as a protest against the building of a dam. This action caused a sensation and provoked fierce reactions. He also created small painted papier mâché sculptures, Têtes (Heads), as well as some gold and silver jewellery. 1983 : He exhibited seven monumental 3x2.5m works at the Art and History Museum in Stockholm: Les Grands Dieux Ase (The Great Aesir Gods), depicting the gods from Scandinavian mythology: Thor, Odin, Frej, Balder, Ymer, Loki and Unknown God, as well as acrylic paintings about the Valkyries. Les Grands Dieux was ultimately exhibited in a purpose-built chapel adjoining the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in 1996. He completed Thor’s Hammer, a monumental sculpture. 1985-1990 : He lived also in the Alicante region, where Spanish friends found him a new workshop. While there he completed Novelda, an album of lithographs featuring poems by Spanish poet Paco Pastor. He completed a new mural, 5mx5m, for the Västeras Science Institute in Sweden. He then started working with the San Carlo Gallery in Milan, Italy, which coordinated all of the Italian events. Major exhibitions and retrospectives were held in Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Spain. He created two boxed set albums, containing series of 10 aquatints, Monde Autre et Chamanes (Otherworld and Shamans), featuring poems by Michel Perrin. 1991-1994 : He went back to working in black and white, completing some very-large-format works. In Murano, in association with the San Carlo Gallery, he created Grands Verres (Large Glasses), a series of large vases and sculptures made of crystal. He painted Kåtan Mimi, an 8x9m Lapp tent, for the town of Arjeplog in Swedish Lapland. He completed a couple of 2m-high painted polyester sculptures, Lui et Elle (Him and Her). He then made a new series of crystal glasses and sculptures in Murano, Italy. He completed Présence (Presence), a new 3.5x2.7m tapestry for the municipality of Timrå, Sweden. He started on the Grands Initiés (Great Insiders) series, all large format and mixed black and white techniques. He finished the strong series about Norse gods. 1995-1996 : He moved into a new workshop in Paris. A retrospective was held at the Sundsvall Museum in Sweden, and on that occasion he painted a monumental 700-m² canvass, Le Géant sur la montagne (The Giant on the Mountain), which was hung all summer long on the mountain slope facing the town. He went on to complete a suite of six silkscreen prints on the same theme. Then he inaugurated the Y, a monumental sculpture. Lindström then completed Temps Zéro (Zero Time), a watch made for Swatch. One of his works, L’hiver (Winter), made the cover of the first 1996 issue of Telerama, the leading French weekly. In association with Sydkraft Sweden, he painted a fresco for the municipality of Örebro on a 17m-high tank with a surface area of 3,000 m², located at the crossroads of major Swedish motorways, by the entrance to the Åbyverket industrial estate. He also created a 6.5m-high Tången sculpture made of painted concrete in Ånge, which was inaugurated on September 3rd in the presence of their Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden. 1997-1999 : He began working on ceramics in Albisolla, Italy. He also completed a new 30m-high fresco for the town of Örebro, located close to the tank he had painted in 1996 near Åbyverket. The year saw the inauguration of the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in Sweden, which harbours the collection of the Bengt and Michèle Lindström Foundation, featuring the entire engravings collection (about 800 works), as well as a selection of paintings and sculptures. He completed a 4x10m mural in the lobby of the University of Eskilstuna, Sweden, and also completed two monumental frescoes on the Akkats dam and a mural on the power station facing Jokkmokk in Swedish Lapland. 2000-2003 : He painted all of the sides of a semi-articulated lorry for Scania, Sweden’s main truck manufacturer. In Italy, he completed a new series of crystal sculptures with Adriano Bérengo. He finished the Great Prophets, a series of 2x2m oil on canvass works. Swiss publisher Ides et Calendes published a small but luxurious monograph, with text by Françoise Monnin. A notebook was also published, Le Visage dans l’Art de Bengt Lindström (Faces in the Art of Bengt Lindström). He completed a substantial series of large blue acrylic paintings, Femmes (Women). 2003 : Bengt fell ill and was unable to paint, but the exhibitions went on. 2004 : Saw the release of the film by Dag Jonzon and Hans Östbom, produced by Dell’arte AB and Östbom Filmbild, about the life of Bengt Lindström. Entitled Lindström - Le Diable de la couleur et de la forme (Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil), the film was produced thanks to support from Film Västernorrland, Länsstyrelsen Västernorrland and Sveriges Television. It was broadcast on Swedish television channels. That same year, the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre was closed as a result of municipal policy. 2005-2007 : The 6m-high sculpture Le Loup (The Wolf), made for PEAB, was inaugurated in Botkyrka-Stockholm. Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil was screened at the Paris Swedish Cultural Centre and released on DVD. The Michèle and Bengt Lindström Foundation was donated and transferred to the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden, where a special room was prepared to host Les Grands Dieux Ase. Edition of the 1998 Ceramics, created in association with Francis Dellile’s ”La Tuilerie” workshop. The Bengt Lindström Collection was inaugurated at, Murberget, the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden. He illustrated Sinfonietta för Juliana, a collection of poems by Italian poet and art critic Sebastiano Grasso. On January 29th, 2008, Bengt Lindström passed away at his home in Sweden. 2008-2012 : The Fondation Krimaro presents the first volume of the works of Bengt Lindström in his collection. Numerous exhibitions-tribute to the work are presented in major cities in Europe. 2012 : Retrospective - Black and White in the engravings - Museum of Härnösand, Murberget, Sweden. Main exhibitions 1952 Fair Réalités Nouvelles – New realities, Paris, France. 1953 Craven Gallery, Paris, France. 1954 Gummeson Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Fair Salon d’Octobre, Paris, France. 1958 Breteau Gallery, Paris, France. 1959 Autour du Spontanéisme – Around the sontaneity, Stockholm, Sweden. L’Europe Nouvelle – The new Europe, LaUnited Statesnne, Switzerland. 1960 Rive Gauche Gallery, Paris, France. 1961 Tooth Gallery, London, England. Le Zodiaque Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Fair Salon de Mai, Paris, France. 1962 Nouvelle Figuration – New Figuration , Mathias Fels Gallery, Paris, France, 1964 Nord-Sud – North-South, in several cities in Sweden. Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, 15 artists of my generation. Museum of Fine Arts in Gent, Belgium, Figuration-Défiguration – Figuration – Disfigurement. 1965 Rive Gauche Gallery. Paris, France. Nord Gallery, Lille, France. Birch Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark. 1966 Museum of Modern Art, Gothenburg, Sweden. 1967 Veranneman Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, United States. Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 23 peintres in Paris. 1968 Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, followed by six exhibitions until 1976. 1969 La Pochade Gallery, Paris, France. Protée Gallery, Toulouse, France, who exhibited him in Paris, Gallery Protée II, from 1984. 1973 Galliera Museum, Paris, France. 1974 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. 1982 Gallery Protée-Arco, Madrid, Spain and Fair Foire de Cologne, Germany. 1983 Historia Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, The Ase gods and the Valkyries. 1984 Gallery Arcano XXI, Lisbon, Portugal. Gallery Christian Cheneau, Paris, France. Museum Château comtal, Carcassonne, France. 1985 Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. 1986 Gallery Sala Gaspar, Barcelona, Spain. Gallery Juan Mordo-Arco, Madrid, Spain. Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. Museum of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. Gallery Three Continents, New-York, United States. Gallery Protée, Toulouse France, Autour du Roi Lear – Around King Lear. 1987 Gallery Kostel, Paris, France. Gallery Zwirner, Cologne, Germany. Gallery Leu, Rottach-Egern, Germany. 1988 Maison du Lot, Figeac, France. Gallery Protée, Paris, France. Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France 1989 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France, La terre des ancêtres - The Land pf the ancestors. Gallery Protée, Paris, France, Nomads. Gallery Raab, London, England. 1990 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. Centre Culturel de Brest, France. 1991 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. 1992 Archotèque, Saint-Denis, La Réunion, France. Museum of Vesoul, Vesoul, France. Gallery San Carlo, Milan, Italy. 1993 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. Tonnellerie du Cognac Monnet...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving

Pour Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Figure in Landscape
By Yves Rouvre
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Pour Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Figure in Landscape" is an original lithograph by Yves Rouvre. The artist signed the piece lower right. It features an abstracted figure in fields of co...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Faust - Limoges Porcelain Blue and Gold
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Limoges porcelain in "Bleu de Sèvres" and gold. Artist: Salvador Dali Exclusive limited edition to 2000 copies "Raynaud & Co. Limoges", France, 1968. "Faust" drawn by Salvador Dalí. Print signed. Plate Signed in the back of the plate Dimensions: Diameter: 26 cm Edited by Salins Earthenware Sold in its original box The company "Raynaud-Limoges" specialized in the production of porcelain products in small runs, among the company's customers - crowned people and representatives of the old aristocratic families of Europe. Dali - the Prodigy Child without an Exam. Salvador Dali was born as the son of a prestigious notary in the small town of Figueras in Northern Spain. His talent as an artist showed at an early age and Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali received his first drawing lessons when he was ten years old. His art teachers were a then well known Spanish impressionist painter, Ramon Pichot and later an art professor at the Municipal Drawing School. In 1923 his father bought his son his first printing press. Dali began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid. He was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. His opinion was that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him. In 1928 Dali went to Paris where he met the Spanish painters Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. He established himself as the principal figure of a group of surrealist artists grouped around Andre Breton, who was something like the theoretical "schoolmaster" of surrealism. Years later Breton turned away from Dali accusing him of support of fascism, excessive self-presentation and financial greediness. By 1929 Dali had found his personal style that should make him famous the world of the unconscious that is recalled during our dreams. The surrealist theory is based on the theories of the psychologist Dr. Sigmund Freud. Recurring images of burning giraffes and melting watches became the artist's surrealist trademarks. His great craftsmanship allowed him to execute his paintings in a nearly photo-realistic style. No wonder that the artist was a great admirer of the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael. Salvador Dali and Gala. Meeting Gala was the most important event in the artist's life and decisive for his future career. She was a Russian immigrant and ten years older than Dali. When he met her, she was married to Paul Eluard. Gala decided to stay with Dali. She became his companion, his muse, his sexual partner, his model in numerous art works and his business manager. For him she was everything. Most of all Gala was a stabilizing factor in his life. And she managed his success in the 1930s with exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Gala was legally divorced from her husband in 1932. In 1934 Dali and Gala were married in a civil ceremony...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Porcelain

'Broken Carousel' — Mid-Century American Symbolism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
'Broken Carousel', color lithograph, 1950, edition 35, Fine and Looney 285. Signed, titled, and numbered '18/35' in pencil. Initialed in the stone, lower right. A fine, richly-inked ...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

I See I don't See it - Linocut by Mino Maccari - 1951
Located in Roma, IT
I See I don't See it is an Linocut Print realized by Mino Maccari in 1951. Very Good condition. No Signature. Mino Maccari (1898-1989) was an Italian writer, painter, engraver and...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Linocut

Israeli Jerusalem Judaica Sephardic Rabbi, Boy, Torah Art Drawing Bezalel School
Located in Surfside, FL
Vibrant lithograph by Israeli master JOSSI STERN. on paper mounted to board. Sefardic Rabbi studying with son Torah. 23 x 21 framed 13.5 x 19.5 Hungary, b. 1923, d. 1992 Jossi (Yossi) Stern, son of David and Katerina, was born in the Bakon Hills of Hungary, in 1923. He was already drawing when at the age of ten he moved with his family from the Bakon Hill region to the considerably more cosmopolitan Budapest. Recognizing the looming threat of Hitler and the pending Nazi invasion of Hungary, in 1940, at the age of seventeen, the young artist made his way to Palestine aboard the Sakaria, an old ship heavily crowded with 2,300 other refugees. Before reaching the shores of Palestine, then under the British Mandate, the British Navy intercepted the ship and declared Stern and all those aboard illegal immigrants. Stern was sent to a prison camp where he remained incarcerated by the British for six months. In 1943, having spent a few years doing agricultural work, Stern was encouraged by close friends who recognized his artistic talent to enroll in the prestigious Bezalel School of the Arts in Jerusalem. An outstanding student, he eventually became a highly respected teacher of Graphic Arts at Bezalel. Stern is recognized in Israel as having been one of the country's premier artists. His drawings are exhibited and appear in many publications and museums worldwide. Stern was the recipient of numerous awards including the Jerusalem Medal as well as both the UNESCO and Herzl Prize. He was included in the exhibition New Bezalel Artists' House, Jerusalem Tel Aviv Museum, along with Artists: Ludwig Wolpert, Joseph Budko, Gershon Knispel, Gershon Avigdor Arikha, Maryan, Jacob Steinhardt, Ruth Schloss...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

André Planson - French Province - Handsigned Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
André Planson - French Province Original Lithograph Handsigned Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Leonor Fini is considered one of the most important women artists of the mid-twentieth century, along with Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning – most of whom Fini knew well. Her career, which spanned some six decades, included painting, graphic design, book illustration, product design (the renowned torso-shaped perfume bottle for Schiaparelli’s Shocking), and set and costume design for theatre, ballet, opera, and film. In this compellingly readable, exhaustively researched account, author Peter Webb brings Fini’s provocative art and unconventional personal life, as well as the vibrant avant-garde world in which she revolved, vividly in life. Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 (August 30 – January 18, 1996, Paris) to Italian and Argentine parents, Leonor grew up in Trieste, Italy, raised by her strong-willed, independent mother, Malvina. She was a virtually self-taught artist, learing anatomy directly from studying cadavers in the local morgue and absorbing composition and technique from the Old Masters through books and visits to museums. Fini’s fledging attempts at painting in Trieste let her to Milan, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1929, and then to Paris in 1931. Her vivacious personality and flamboyant attire instantly garnered her a spotlight in the Parisian art world and she soon developed close relationships with the leading surrealist writers and painters, including Paul Eluard, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, who became her lover for a time. The only surrealist she could not abide because of his misogyny was André Breton. Although she repeatedly exhibited with them, she never considered herself a surrealist. The American dealer Julien Levy, very much impressed by Fini’s painting and smitten by her eccentric charms, invited her to New York in 1936, where she took part in a joint gallery exhibition with Max Ernst and met many American surrealists, including Joseph Cornell and Pavel Tchelitchew. Her work was included in MoMA’s pivotal Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism exhibition, along with De Chirico, Dali, Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. In 1939 in Paris she curated an exhibition of surrealist furniture...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

La Comédie Humaine
Located in OPOLE, PL
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - La Comédie Humaine Lithograph from 1954. Dimensions of work: 35.5 x 26.5 cm Publisher: Tériade, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition. Fast and s...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Erotic scene - Héliogravure by Micheal Von Zichy - 1911
Located in Roma, IT
The erotic scene is an original Héliogravure artwork on ivory-colored paper, realized by Micheal Von Zichy in 1911. Printed in only 300 copies, Leipzig; Privatdruck, from the Catalo...
Category

1910s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving, Paper

Original 'Bundesbahn durch das Gastliches Deutschland' vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Linen-backed original German / Germany culinary map in excellent condition. MIT DER DEUTSCHEN BUNDESBAHN DURCH DAS GASTLICHE DEUTSCHLAND. Mit der Deutschen Bundesbahn durch das Gastliche Deutschland (With Deutsche Bundesbahn through Hospitable Germany). A map of Germany showing all the food and wine features in various regions and cities. If you go to Germany and want to find the origins of foods, this will lead you to the correct city. From wine, bread, fish, cookies, spat, prezels, pork, bier, french...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Jack McClain, (Evening in the City) (NYC)
Located in New York, NY
A moody evening in New York City. The buildings capture the quiet that New York sometimes achieves. Signed and dated in pencil.
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Luna llena (Full Moon) (1/30)
Located in San Francisco, CA
Rocca Luis César Luna llena (Full Moon), 2023 Serigraph in five colors 21.70 x 21.70 in Edition of 30 This serigraph (silkscreen or screen print) is part of a limited edition of 30....
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Screen

Picasso, Composition, Chant funèbre pour Ignacio Sanchez Mejías (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on grand vélin d’Arches paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition; unframed. Notes: From the folio, Chant funèbre pour Ignacio Sanchez Mejías,...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"The Urchin (Le Gamin) -Second and Final State, " Etching signed by Edouard Manet
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"The Urchin (Le Gamin)" is an original etching by Edouard Manet. It depicts a young boy holding a basket with his long-haired dog. This is the second and fina...
Category

1860s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Le Cocu Magnifique -- complete with 12 original etchings
Located in New York, NY
About In-folio Oblong Dimensions : 29x39 cm. Paris Atelier Crommelynck 1968 Edition #41 of 200 copies including 12 original out-of-text etchings (7 etchings, 4 etchings and aquatint...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Drypoint, Etching, Aquatint

Sanft bis zur letzten Rasur (I. Fassung - B/W)
Located in Kansas City, MO
Bele Bachem Sanft bis zur letzten Rasur (I. Fassung - B/W) Lithograph on Velum Year: 1968 Size: 30x25.1 inches Signed, dated and inscribed by hand Dry Stam...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Vellum, Lithograph

Leaves of Love-Orange Lady plus Mermaid (two proof prints)
Located in Middletown, NY
A colorful, myth-based female nude along with a portriat of a mermaid by the same artist. Lithograph in color on white wove paper, 18 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches (462 x 297 mm), full margin...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Inspired Village of Montmartre - Pochoir
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
(after) Maurice Utrillo Inspired Village of Montmartre Pochoir with printed signature Edition of 490 Dimensions: 39 x 30 cm Information : This print was created for the portfolio "Le Village inspiré, Chronique de la bohème de Montmartre (1920-1950) " published by Vertex in 1950 Condition : Excellent Maurice Utrillo (1883 - 1955) The French painter Maurice Utrillo was born as the illegitimate son of the painter Suzanne Valladon in Paris on December 26, 1883. He was adopted by the Catalan art critic Miguel Utrillo...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Stencil

Chris Ware New Yorker Cartoonist Limited Edition Thanksgiving Print NYC
Located in Surfside, FL
This is one print – printed in full color on 15" x 20" heavy cream-colored paper. It is from a limited edition series of 175, the portfolio is hand numbered and hand signed by Chris Ware. the individual prints are not. The page with the hand signature is included here as a photo for reference only it is not included in this sale. Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware (born December 28, 1967), is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series (begun 1994) and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) and Building Stories (2012). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style. Ware often refers to himself in the publicity for his work in self-effacing, even withering tones. He is considered by some critics and fellow notable illustrators and writers, such as Dave Eggers, to be among the best currently working in the medium; Canadian graphic-novelist Seth has said, "Chris really changed the playing field. After him, a lot of [cartoonists] really started to scramble and go, 'Holy [expletive], I think I have to try harder.'" While still a sophomore at UT, Ware came to the attention of Art Spiegelman, who invited Ware to contribute to Raw, the influential anthology magazine Spiegelman was co-editing with Françoise Mouly. Ware has acknowledged that being included in Raw gave him confidence and inspired him to explore printing techniques and self-publishing. His Fantagraphics series Acme Novelty Library defied comics publishing conventions with every issue. Ware's art reflects early 20th-century American styles of cartooning and graphic design, shifting through formats from traditional comic panels to faux advertisements and cut-out toys. Stylistic influences include advertising graphics from that same era; newspaper strip cartoonists Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and Frank King (Gasoline Alley); Charles Schulz's post-WWII strip Peanuts and the cover designs of ragtime-era sheet music. Ware has spoken about finding inspiration in the work of artist Joseph Cornell and cites Richard McGuire's strip Here as a major influence on his use of non-linear narratives. He is one of the great practitioners who have elevated the graphic novel style along with, Shepard Fairey, Ben Katchor and Robert Crumb. Quimby the Mouse was an early character for Ware and something of a breakthrough. Rendered in the style of an early animation character like Felix the Cat, Quimby the Mouse is perhaps Ware's most autobiographical character. Ware's Building Stories was serialized in a host of different venues. It first appeared as a monthly strip in Nest Magazine. Installments later appeared in a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Kramer's Ergot, and most notably, the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Building Stories appeared weekly in the New York Times Magazine from September 18, 2005 until April 16, 2006. A full chapter was published in Acme Novelty Library, number 18. Another installment was published under the title "Touch Sensitive" as a digital app released through McSweeneys. The entire narrative was published as a boxed set of books by Pantheon in October 2012. Ware was commissioned by Chip Kidd to design the inner machinations of the bird on the cover of Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In 2011, Ware created the poster for the U.S. release of the 2010 Palme d'Or winning film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Awards and honors Over the years his work garnered several awards, including the 1999 National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Comic Book for Acme Novelty Library and Award for Graphic Novel for Building Stories. Ware has won numerous Eisner Awards and multiple Harvey Awards. In 2002, Ware became the first comics artist to be invited to exhibit at Whitney Museum of American Art biennial exhibition. With Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb and Gary Panter, Ware was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2006 and at the University of Nebraska's Sheldon Museum of Art, in 2007. Many famous artists have done covers for the New Yorker Magazine including, Saul Steinberg, Maira Kalman, Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Roz Chast, Ed Koren...
Category

Early 2000s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Color

Japanese Costume - Lithograph by Emile Gallois - Mid-20th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph and pochoir realized by Emile Gallois in the mid-20th Century ca. to illustrate japanese costumes. Signed in the plate. Published by H. Laurens, Paris. Very good condit...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE BROADCAST - Published by WPA!
Located in Santa Monica, CA
NAN LURIE (b. 1910-?) INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE BROADCAST, c 1935 Lithograph, published by the WPA New York Project. Signed and titled in pencil with the WPA NY Project stamp lower left. WPA Editions are typically about 25. Image 14 x 10” sheet 16 x 11 ¼”. Listed in the GSA (General Service Administration) WPA catalog in only one example, the University of Kentucky Art...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

André Derain - Ovid's Heroides - Original Etching
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
André Derain - Ovid's Heroides Original Etching Edition of 134 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Ovide [Marcel Prevost], Héroïdes, Paris, Société des Cent-une, 1938 Andre Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, an artist colony outside Paris. In 1898, he enrolled in the Academie Carriere in Paris where he met Matisse. He attended art school and in 1900, set up a studio with Maurice deVlaminck. After his military service from 1900-1904, Derain exhibited his work at the Salon des Independants and then at the Salon d'Automne with Matisse, Vlaminck and others, thus creating the movement of Fauvism.He worked with Henri Matisse in 1905 at Collioure, and participated in the 1905 Salon d’Automne with Matisse, Vlaminck, and Braque, the exhibition in which this group was labeled as Fauves, or Wild Beasts. Along with Vlaminck, Derain was one of the first artists to collect the tribal art of Africa which was influential to many of the artists of the early 20th century. In 1906, Derain met Picasso and his dealer, who purchased Derain's entire studio, creating newfound financial success. During this time, he was hired for the illustrations for works by Guillaume Apollinaire and Andre Breton. After World War I, his friend's Cubism movement affected his art, along with influence from Classicism and African Art. Derain stayed in Paris during most of the Occupation, where he was esteemed by the Nazis because of his artistic integrity. Hitler's Foreign Minister commissioned him to paint a family portrait, but he politely refused. His popularity began to decline after the war because of disagreement over new artistic movements. He later lost most of his eyesight due to illness, which may have been the reason he was hit by a truck in 1954, dying from shock at the age of 74. Derain’s Fauve paintings are typically bright with intense color. Influenced by the work of Cézanne as well as the early Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque’s, Derain’s style changed and by 1912, the paintings became more traditional and structured. For the remainder of his career, he continued to investigate different compositional methods including the perspective of Cézanne and the pointillism of Seurat. He also designed ballet sets and made a number of sculptures. At the turn of the century, Andre Derain exhibited at the radical Fauve Salon d’Automne (1905) and was one of the founding members of the Fauvist movement together with his life-long friends Matisse and Vlaminck. The works he produced in this period, often under the guidance of Matisse, have been counted among the masterpieces of Fauvism. From around 1918, Derain turned his back on the avant-garde and had begun to explore some of the more traditional genres of Western art, including landscapes. His main source of inspiration once the Fauves group had dispersed was found in the Louvre, where he admired the early Renaissance works in particular. Talking of his frequent visits there, he once said, ‘That seemed to me then, the true, pure absolute painting.’ His work evolved through many styles and, most significantly, turned back to the past, particularly after 1922 when Lenin had publicly pronounced his disdain for abstract art. Derain built up an immense and fascinating collection of paintings, sculpture and objets d’art throughout his life which aided his experimentation and was reflected in his work between 1930 and 1945. During these years, his painting technique displayed the most avenues of invention, using a repertoire of primitivist motifs. His eclectic collection was constantly changing. In 1930 he sold his African collection in exchange for bronzes of antiquity and the Renaissance which indicated a real change of interest in the objects, as did his later pursuit of Greek ceramic painting and his enthusiasm for grand cycles of literary and antique themes...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Ex Libris Giuseppe Bottai - Woodcut by Giacomo Balla - 1930 ca
Located in Roma, IT
Realized by Balla in 1929/30, the ex libris reproduces the drawing Commentary on the dynamic life of the "Duce", published in "Oggi e Domani" on September 29th, 1930. Woodcut print....
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Diurnes : Birdman - Original Collotype and Stencil (Cramer #115)
Located in Paris, IDF
Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Diurnes, Birdman, 1962 Original collotype and stencil (Jacomet workshop) Unsigned Limited to 1000 copy On paper 40 x 30 cm (c. 15.7 x 11.2 in) REFERENCE ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Stencil

Original Poster United Nations New York 2021 / Affiche Originale ONU
Located in PÉRIGUEUX, FR
Cette affiche fut réalisée pour la World Federation of United Nations Associations – WFUNA (Fédération Mondiale des Associations pour les Nations Unies), à l'occasion des 75ème anniversaire de la création de l'ONU à New-York. Il a eu lieu le 24 octobre 2021. Grégoire MATHIAS...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Color

Vallauris
Located in OPOLE, PL
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Vallauris Lithograph from 1954. Dimensions of work: 35.5 x 26.5 cm Publisher: Tériade, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition. Fast and secure shi...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Composition (Sabatier 393), Centre Noeuds, Roberto Matta
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Etching on vélin d’Arches paper. Paper Size: 23.875 x 17.5 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and numbered, 38/125, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Centre Noeuds, 1974. Published by ...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Circus : Acrobat on Yellow Backgroung - Original Lithograph (Mourlot #602)
Located in Paris, IDF
Marc CHAGALL (1887-1985) Acrobat on Yellow Backgroung, 1959 Original Lithograph (Mourlot workshop) Printed signature in the plate Lilited edition of 100 unumbered proofs On Arches V...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Somewhere in France
Located in Middletown, NY
Etching on antique cream laid paper with a partial watermark (likely Arches), 12 1/8 x 6 1/8 inches (308 x 156 mm), full margins. Signed and dated in pencil in the lower right margin...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Handmade Paper, Laid Paper, Etching

Sculptural Objects, School Prints, Henry Moore
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on English cartridge paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good Condition; never framed or matted. Notes: Published by School Prints Ltd., London; Printe...
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1940s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Repos sur la banquette
Located in London, GB
Henri Matisse Repos sur la banquette 1929 Lithograph on Arches Velin paper, Edition of 50 Paper size: 49.5 x 65.5 cms (19 1/2 x 25 3/4 ins) Image size: 44.5 x 54.5 cms (17 1/2 x 21 1...
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Matisse, Série I, var. 1 (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...
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1940s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Picasso, Femme de Face (Bloch 372; Baer 700; Cramer 41) (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Etching on papeteries vélin de Lana paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition, with full margins. Notes: From the folio, Jours de gloire, Histoire de la ...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Alexander Calder Circus Reproduction Lithograph After a Drawing
Located in Surfside, FL
(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Jean Cocteau - Animalism - Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 Jean Cocteau W...
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1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Leonor Fini - Saturday Night Dress - Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Leonor Fini - Saturday Night Dress - Original Lithograph The Flowers of Evil 1964 Conditions: excellent Edition: 500 Dimensions: 46 x 34 cm Editions: Le Cercle du Livre Précieux, P...
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1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

after Henri Matisse - Acrobat
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
after Henri Matisse - Acrobat Edition of 200 with the printed signature, as issued 76 x 56 With stamp of the Succession Matisse References : Artvalue - Succession Matisse
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1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Pierre Bonnard - The Sun - Original Lithograph
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Pierre Bonnard - The Sun Original Lithograph Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Verve . Revue Artistique et Litteraire. Vol. V, Nos 17 et 18. Signed in the plate Unumbered as issued
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1940s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Untitled framed lithograph by Aristide Maillol
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Framed lithograph of female nude of pastel by Aristide Maillol. Initials in lower-right corner. Framed under glass in wooden frame.
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Original SKI USA Fly United Air Lines vintage sports travel poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original poster: SKI USA FLY UNITED AIRLINES. Original vintage United Airlines travel poster for their skiing destinations. ...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Offset

André Breton (Cramer 12; Bloch 63), Clair de Terre, Pablo Picasso
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Etching on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Clair de Terre, avec un portrait par Pablo Picasso, 1923. Published by André Breto...
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1920s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Tamayo, Composition, Ediciones Polígrafa, Redfern Gallery (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Ediciones Polígrafa, Redfern Gallery, 1979. Published by Redfern Gallery, London...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

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

"Liliana" Large original color serigraph
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork titled "Liliana" c.1990 in an original color serigraph by Bolivian artist Marion Ferrer (Mario) Cespedes, b.1942It is hand signed, titled and numbered 157/290 in pencil ...
Category

Late 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Screen

'Clown' — WPA American Expressionism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Leon Bibel, 'Clown', color serigraph, 1939, edition 20. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '/20' in pencil. A fine, richly-inked, painterly impression, with fresh colors, on buff la...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Screen

Modern figurative prints for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Modern figurative prints available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add figurative prints created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of orange, yellow, blue, purple and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Thomas Holloway, Mino Maccari, Franco Gentilini, and Paul Gavarni. Frequently made by artists working with Lithograph, and Etching and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Modern figurative prints, so small editions measuring 0.04 inches across are also available. Prices for figurative prints made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $11 and tops out at $220,000, while the average work sells for $250.

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