Salvador Dalí­

"Caesar and Cleopatra"

1972

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) is Surrealism's most accomplished and iconic practitioner. His work is eccentric, elaborate, and mysterious, with an avant-garde style that explores the depths of consciousness and dream-like states. Prolific and endlessly inventive, Dali worked in almost every possible artistic medium; film, sculpture, photography, fashion and of course painting. Some of his earliest etchings date to the 1930's, as he worked in the graphic arts at the beginning of his career. "Adam & Eve" comes from a series called "Our Historical Heritage." The portfolio depicts eleven events and historical figures from the Hebrew scriptures (the Torah or Old Testament), including Noah's Ark, Joseph, Moses, and more. This portfolio emphasizes Dali's influence by religious themes, and is created with his signature mastery and style. This etching depicts the pivotal moment in the biblical story, when temptation strikes Adam and Eve, as they sit in the Garden of Eden and are lured to the lustrous forbidden fruit hanging from the tree of knowledge. Eve's hand wraps around the apple while Adam's reaches for it, as the serpent watches...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Femme au cochon (Woman with Pig) Drypoint etching with roulette from 1969. The edition 142/145. Dimensions of work: 38 x 28 cm. Hand signed. Publishe...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Sorcière au Balai (Witch on Broom) Drypoint etching with roulette from 1969. The edition 142/145. Dimensions of work: 38 x 28 cm. Hand signed. Publis...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Femme au clown (Woman with Clown) Drypoint etching with roulette from 1969. The edition 142/145. Dimensions of work: 38 x 28 cm. Hand signed. Publish...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Cavalier et la mort (Knight and Death) Drypoint etching with roulette from 1969. The edition 142/145. Dimensions of work: 38 x 28 cm. Hand signed. Pu...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Femmes poules (Hen Women) Drypoint etching with roulette from 1969. The edition 142/145. Dimensions of work: 38 x 28 cm. Hand signed. Publisher: Pier...

La Ressuscitée from Dalí's Le Décameron portfolio is a drypoint etching with color on paper, signed Dalí lower right and numbered 17/150 lower left. From the Swedish edition of 150 A...

Le Jument de Compère Pierre from Dalí's Le Décameron portfolio is a drypoint etching with color on paper, signed Dalí lower right and numbered 17/150 lower left. From the Swedish edi...

Le Diable en Enfer from Dalí's Le Décameron portfolio is a drypoint etching with color on paper, signed Dalí lower right and numbered 17/150 lower left. From the Swedish edition of 1...

Lawrence Kupferman, 'Fantasia Americana – 1880', drypoint etching with sandground, 1943. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Series A, 1971 2/6' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on heavy, cream wove paper, with full margins (2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches); the paper slightly lightened within the original mat opening, otherwise in excellent condition. One of only 6 impressions printed in 1971, with the added sandground grey background tint. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 11 13/16 x 14 3/4 inches; sheet size 18 x 20 1/4 inches. Collections: National Gallery of Art, Zimmerli Art Museum (Rutgers University). ABOUT THE ARTIST Lawrence Kupferman (1909 - 1982) was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and grew up in a working-class family. He attended the Boston Latin School and participated in the high school art program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the late 1920s, he studied drawing under Philip Leslie Hale at the Museum School—an experience he called 'stultifying and repressive'. In 1932 he transferred to the Massachusetts College of Art, where he first met his wife, the artist Ruth Cobb. He returned briefly to the Museum School in 1946 to study with the influential expressionist German-American painter Karl Zerbe. Kupferman held various jobs while pursuing his artistic career, including two years as a security guard at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During the 1930s he worked as a drypoint etcher for the Federal Art Project, creating architectural drawings in a formally realistic style—these works are held in the collections of the Fogg Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In the 1940s he began incorporating more expressionistic forms into his paintings as he became progressively more concerned with abstraction. In 1946 he began spending summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met and was influenced by Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and other abstract painters. At about the same time he began exhibiting his work at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston. In 1948, Kupferman was at the center of a controversy involving hundreds of Boston-area artists. In February of that year, the Boston Institute of Modern Art issued a manifesto titled 'Modern Art and the American Public' decrying 'the excesses of modern art,' and announced that it was changing its name to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The poorly conceived statement, intended to distinguish Boston's art scene from that of New York, was widely perceived as an attack on modernism. In protest, Boston artists such as Karl Zerbe, Jack Levine, and David Aronson formed the 'Modern Artists Group' and organized a mass meeting. On March 21, 300 artists, students, and other supporters met at the Old South Meeting House and demanded that the ICA retract its statement. Kupferman chaired the meeting and read this statement to the press: “The recent manifesto of the Institute is a fatuous declaration which misinforms and misleads the public concerning the integrity and intention of the modern artist. By arrogating to itself the privilege of telling the artists what art should be, the Institute runs counter to the original purposes of this organization whose function was to encourage and to assimilate contemporary innovation.” The other speakers were Karl Knaths...