20th Century Prints and Multiples

’Les Oiseaux De Feu’ By Lars Bo Medium - Etching on BFK Rives paper Signed - Yes Edition - 61/120 Date - 1964 Size - 650mm x 500mm Condition - 9 Colour of print may not be ac...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, Untitled (Portrait of an African Woman), lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 13 in pencil. Number 13 of Volume 2, a series of 10 lithographs publis...

An exquisitely printed image created by Richard Bosman in 1996, the artist’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge is a woodcut on Japan paper. Measuring 18 x 24 1/2 in. (45.7 x 62.2 cm), unframed,...

Original boxing print with the initials P.B. in the upper left corner. Printer Ed. Sagot Editeur, Paris. Professional acid-free archival linen backed and ready to frame. Excel...

Silkscreen on Patapar printing parchment paper. Paper Size: 10.125 x 10.125 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Jasper Johns, Screenprints...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Renaissance MEDIUM: Lithograph SIGNED: Hand Signed by Salvador Dali EDITION NUMBER: 196/250 MEASUREMENTS: 21.5" x 29.5" YEAR: 1978 FRAMED: No CO...

Lithograph on vélin des Papeteries du Marais paper. Paper Size: 14 x 10.25 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Verve: Revue Artistique et ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Madame M.P. (Mrs. M.P.), originates from the 1954 album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), pu...

Parapliers the Willow Dipped by Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart from The Mothers of Invention, is part of the Collection of American Masters at the Nordfallen Museum in ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Madame Matisse (Mrs. Matisse), originates from the 1954 album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matiss...

Screenprint Edition of 100 53 x 61 cm (20.9 x 24 in) Framed 71 x 78.5 x 5 cm, 28 x 31 x 2 in Signed, numbered, dated and titled on the front Excellent condition. Minor imperfections ...

Kawase Hasui, 'Zentsuji Temple in the Rain' from the seres 'Collected Views of Japan II', color woodblock print, 1937. Signed Hasui in black ink, with the artist’s red seal Kawase, ...

After Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) La Grande Maternité 1963 pencil signed and annotated 'E.A.' (aside from the edition of 200), with margins Editions Combat de la Paix, Paris P...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Place de la Concorde (Place de la Concorde), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, Vol. VII, No. 27–28, originates...

"Young Woman in Shirt" was painted in 1905 by Pablo Picasso and depicts a standing female in his typical early blue phase style. The color lithograph offered here comes beautifully f...

This exquisite lithograph by Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled La Blouse Roumaine (The Romanian Blouse), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, Vol. II, No. 5–6, originates from...

This reproduction of “Superman” by Mel Ramos, part of the De Young Museum’s permanent collection, showcases the artist’s signature Pop Art style, blending comic book aesthetics with ...

Paper Size: 21.75 x 34 inches ( 55.245 x 86.36 cm ) Image Size: 18 x 31.25 inches ( 45.72 x 79.375 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional ...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 8.10.64. I, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sketchb...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 4.5.64. I, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sketchbo...

Contemporary colorful silkscreen by Louisiana born artist George Rodrigue. The work features Rodrigue's iconic blue dog character dressed in a yellow bandana and a cowboy hat set aga...

Artist: Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Title: Antiombrelle à atomiseurs de liquides (Michler/Löpsinger 822-831; Field 75-13), Imaginations et Objets du Futur (Liquid atomizer anti-shade, ...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 8.10.64. XVII, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sket...

Paper Size: 25.25 x 15 inches ( 64.135 x 38.1 cm ) Image Size: 19.5 x 15.5 inches ( 49.53 x 39.37 cm ) Framed: No Condition: D: Heavy signs of wear, Torn, Damaged. SOLD AS IS. Pri...

David Hockney, Dog 38, 1995 Original vintage exhibition posters from 1995 featuring Hockney's paintings of his beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodge, that appeared in many of his p...

Original “Never So Few” vintage linen-backed movie poster, NSS 59/348. Very clean and bright, with original theater-issued fold marks touched up. Grade A-. Ready to frame. Nev...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled L’Ecuyere et le clown (The Equestrienne and the Clown), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, La Comedie Humai...

Salvador DALI Flordali : Surreal Tree (Fingers and Lips), 1969 Original Lithograph and Etching Handsigned in pencil Numbered 142/175 On Japan paper 77 x 57 cm (c. 31 x 22.4 inch) ...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 8.10.64. XII, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sketc...

Salvador DALI (1904-1969) Casanova : Snail lady, 1967 Original etching Signed in the plate On vellum Rives 38 x 28 cm (c. 14.9 x 11 inch) REFERENCES : - Catalog raisonné Field #67-...

Leon Bibel, 'Unemployed Marchers', 2-color lithograph, c. 1938, edition 25. Signed, titled, and numbered '2/25' in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression on off-white, wove paper, w...

Etching on vélin de Rives BFK paper. Paper Size: 11.5 x 9 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Lysistrata, 1934. Published by The Limited E...

Jean Solombre, French (1948 - ) - L'embellie, Year: circa 1980, Medium: Etching with Aquatint on Arches, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, Edition: 78/125, Image Size: 12.5 ...

Artist: PABLO PICASSO (AFTER ) Title: Vive le Paix (Long Live Peace) Year: 1954 Published by: Combat Pour La Paix, Paris Medium: Lithograph on Lana paper (Blind stamp JPG attached) P...

Edouard Benedictus, 'Poppy' from the portfolio 'Relais', plate 14, color pochoir, 1930. Signed in the matrix, in the center bottom margin. A superb, richly-inked impression, with fresh, vibrant colors, including metallic gold and silver inks, on heavy, cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Published by Éditions Vincent, Fréal et Cie, Paris. The pochoir production is by Jean Saudé, the French printmaker known for his mastery of the technique and the author of the first how-to book on the pochoir process. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 14 3/8 x 11 inches (365 x 279 mm); sheet size 17 1/4 x 13 7/8 inches (438 x 352 mm). Impressions of this work are held in the following museum collections: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library (Smithsonian), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, New York Public Library, Toledo Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. ABOUT THIS WORK The Pochoir process is a refined stencil-based technique employed to create multiples or to add color to prints produced in other mediums. Characterized by its crisp lines and rich color, the print-making process was most popular from the late 19th century through the 1930s, with its center of activity in Paris. The pochoir process began with the analysis of an image’s composition, including color tones and densities. The numerous stencils (made of aluminum, copper, or zinc) necessary to create a complete image were then designed and hand-cut by the 'découpeur.' The 'coloristes' applied watercolor or gouache pigments through the stencils, skillfully employing a variety of different brushes and methods of paint application to achieve the desired depth of color and textural and tonal nuance. The pochoir process, by virtue of its handcrafted methodology, resulted in the finished work producing the effect of an original painting, and in fact, each print was unique. ABOUT THE ARTIST Edouard Benedictus (1878 -1930), artist, designer, composer, and chemist, was born and died in Paris. A highly-regarded designer and art critic of the Art Nouveau era, Benedictus gained renown as a colorist and creator of Art Deco-inspired geometric and floral motifs. His work had a significant influence on international fashions in clothing, home furnishings, graphic design, and decorative objects of the period, earning him commissions from leading European design firms. In 1925 he was invited to represent Art Deco textile design...

Original vintage travel advertising poster for the FRENCH RIVIERA FRENCH NATIONAL RAILROADS SNCF (French National Railways) - the French Riviera. (Cote D'Azur, known as the French Riviera) The image features people looking out towards a marina full of sailing boats. Colorful artwork by the French painter Jules Cavailles (1901-1977). Printed by Perceval, Paris in 1953. Mid-Century Modern. Grade A- This is the English version of the poster compared to the design created for Cote d'Azur. The English version is much rarer (both are rare today). The poster gives the impression of a naive painting at this Mediterranean beach and seaport. Step into a world of timeless elegance and sunlit dreams with this exquisite French Riviera Vintage...

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) Maternal Love Engraving after a pastel Signed in the plate On vellum, 50 x 38 cm (c. 20 x 15 in) INFORMATION: Copperplate engraving published by the Galer...

This vintage blank notecard, published by te Neues Publishing, features artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat and is a rare example of his painting titled "Hardware Store." Elegantly frame...

Paper Size: 31.5 x 23.75 inches ( 80.01 x 60.325 cm ) Image Size: 31.5 x 23.75 inches ( 80.01 x 60.325 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling ...

Salvador Dali The Frozen Watches of Space-Time, 1974 From 'The Conquest of the Cosmos' portfolio. Embossed etchings with lithograph Image size: 75 x 55.5 cm Sheet size: 97 x 67.5 ...

Paper Size: 4.25 x 6 inches ( 10.795 x 15.24 cm ) Image Size: 3.75 x 5.75 inches ( 9.525 x 14.605 cm ) Framed: Yes Frame Size: H: 17.25 x W: 13 x D: 1.25 in. Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Details: This vintage blank...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 8.10.64. VIII, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sket...

Original World Cup USA ’94, Coca Cola sponsored vintage poster. Archival linen backed in A- condition, ready to frame. This World Cup ’94 poster is very rarely seen or available....

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, 1957. Original exhibition poster Picasso – Peintures 1955–56, designed entirely by Pablo Picasso for his show at Galerie Louise Leiris. Executed as a co...

signed and numbered lower image edition 7/40 Catalogue raisonné 00269 Internationally recognized painter and printmaker Alex Katz was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. Over a thir...

Vintage offset lithograph postcard published by Art Unlimited Amsterdam. Printed in Holland. The postcard is framed in a black wood frame with a front profile of 1 inch and a side pr...

Screenprint Edition 102 of 120 83.5 × 70.5 cm (32.9 x 27.8 in) Signed, titled, dated and numbered on front Artwork in excellent condition considering its age. Only visible under stud...

Marc Chagall, After, Russian (1887 - 1985) - The Songs of Songs, Year: 1975, Medium: Lithograph Poster, signed in color pencil lower right, Edition: 8500, Size: 30 x 20.25 in. (7...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled 8.10.64. X, from the folio Le Gout du Bonheur, trois carnets d`atelier (The Taste of Happiness, Three Studio Sketchb...

Artist: Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Title: "Skybird" (from the Braniff International Airways Flying Colors Collection) Year: 1974-75 Medium: Lithographs on Arches paper Size: 20 x 2...

This five-color offset lithograph, featuring a facsimile signature of Marc Chagall, masterfully captures a vibrant detail from his iconic Paris Opera ceiling. Printed on high-quality...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, 'Untitled (Black Woman Crouching)', lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 16 in pencil. Number 16 of Volume 2, a series of...

Color lithograph after the 1935 oil on canvas by René Magritte, printed signature of Magritte and numbered from the edition of 300. The lithograph features the dry stamps of the Mag...

Tom Alan Lieber, (American, born 1949), Untitled Monotype oil painting on paper 1984 Hand signed TL and dated '84 in the lower margin. Measurements: 47 X 63 inches This was probab...

Artist: Roy Lichtenstein Title: American Indian Theme VI Medium: Woodcut on handmade Suzuki Paper Date: 1980 Edition: 24/50 Frame Size: 40" x 53" Sheet Size: 37 3/4" x 50 5/16" Image...

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

"Homage to the Square - Po2, F4, I2" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original screenprints that...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, Untitled (Profile of an African Woman), lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 15 in pencil. Number 15 of Volume 2, a series of 10 lithographs publish...

Medium: lithograph (after the original lithograph poster "Theogonie" for the Maeght Gallery). During the late 1940's and throughout the 1950's, Georges Braque created a series of pos...

Silkscreen VIII from Apocalypse is a 1988 vintage offset lithograph postcard, published by Art Unlimited Amsterdam and printed in Holland. The postcard is framed in a black wood fram...