Ossip Zadkine

Ossip Zadkine - Ultimate Step - Original Etching

1966

Leonor Fini - Untitled - Original Handsigned Etching Circa 1982 On colored paper Handsigned and Numbered Edition: 275 Dimensions: 69 x 52.5 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 for her childhood friend Leo Castelli for the opening of his first gallery. Introductions to her exhibition catalogues were written by De Chirico, Ernst, and Jean Cocteau. A predominant theme of Fini’s art is the complex relationship between the sexes, primarily the interplay between the dominant female and the passive, androgynous male. In many of her most powerful works, the female takes the form of a sphinx, often with the face of the artist. Fini was also an accomplished portraitist; among her subjects were Stanislao Lepri...

Dufza - Paris - Quai des Grands Augustins - Original Handsigned Etching Circa 1940 Handsigned in pencil Dimensions: 20 x 25 cm

Dufza - Paris - Quai de la Tournelle - Original Handsigned Etching Circa 1940 Handsigned in pencil Dimensions: 20 x 25 cm Unumbered as issued

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...

Dufza - Paris Notre Dame - Original Handsigned Etching Circa 1940 Handsigned in pencil Dimensions: 20 x 25 cm Unumbered as issued

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...

This sensuous and playful scene is characteristic of Oldenburg’s printmaking ouevre: a veritable heap of women displaying various expressions of joy and come-hither coquettishness. T...

These erotic etchings depict mythological and fantasy creatures as striking nudes. A host of sensuous and shocking figures include a mermaid, Medusa, and women in both jubilant and p...

Irving Guyer captured the bustle of the city in a modernist style. This print is signed and titled in pencil.

A very good impression of this etching and aquatint. Signed 75/75 in pencil by Wesselmann.

- Plate 55 from the Suite 156 - with stamp signature - dated in the plate 2.3.70 - edition 26/50 - cat. raisonné Bloch 1910

- Plate 118 from the Suite 156 - edition 48/50 - stamp signature - dated in the plate 17.5.71 - cat. raisonné Bloch 1973; cat. raisonné Baer 1982