Charles Frederick Surendorf

'State Street, Columbia', California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ASL

Signed, lower right, with artist's chop mark in Hiragana, 'Tensen-e' 天泉絵, for Ogyū Tensen 荻生天泉 (Japanese, 1882-1947) A large, early-20th-century, hand-colored Japanese woodblock sho...

Signed lower right, 'Ynez Johnston' (American, b. 1920) and dated 1964; additionally inscribed 'imp' lower right, titled lower center 'Tribal Coast' with number and limitation, 198/2...

'Formal Samoan Meal' by Marion Osborn Cunningham, 1948. New York Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, National Gallery, San Francisco Ar...

Signed lower right, 'Hirano' for Yoshito Hirano (Japanese, born 1938) and created circa 1970; titled, verso, 'Mimosa Tree Restaurant'. Paper dimensions: 28 x 23 inches. A verticall...

Tsukuda Sumiyoshi no yashiro (Sumiyoshi Shrine on Tsukuda Island) is the original title of this superb ten colour woodblock print on paper, by the Japanese master, Utagawa Hiroshige ...

Excellent Woodcut print by Oklahoma/New Mexico artist Ina Annette (1901-1990). The image measures 10 ½ x 13 ½ inches. The work rests in a 17 1/4 x 20 1/4 inch museum mat. The print i...

Original leaflet from Johann Prüss' 1479 printing of "Das Heldenbuch." The Heldenbücher is the title given to a group of late medieval/early renaissance Germanic manuscripts primari...

"Grave of Santa Anna's Leg" Original Woodblock Print, Signed Artist's Proof Boldly colored woodblock print by Carol Summers (American, 1925-2016). This piece is a segment of a grave, with a headstone that has a skull and cross. There are two bright green plants flanking the headstone. Below the headstone and plants, there is a large arched blue shape, with a crescent moon and stars. A red leg, bent at the knee, cuts across the blue arch. Signed "Carol Summers" along the right edge of the blue shape. Numbered and titled "A/P Grave of Sant Anna's Leg" along the left edge of the blue shape. Presented in a silver colored aluminum frame. Frame size: 32.245"H x 27.25"W Paper size: 29.75"H x 24.5"W Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts...