Jesse F. Reed Art

Jesse F. Reed, 'Church at Chichicastenango', color etching and aquatint, 1963. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed and dated in the plate, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 3/8 to 2 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Chichicastenango, also known as Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, is a town in the El Quiché department of Guatemala, located in a mountainous region about 140 km northwest of Guatemala City. Chichicastenango is a K'iche' Maya cultural center, with the great majority of the municipality's population indigenous Mayan K'iche. The church depicted is the 400-year-old church Iglesia de Santo Tomás. Built atop a Pre-Columbian temple platform, the steps which remain venerated today, originally led to a temple of the pre-Hispanic Maya civilization. K'iche' Maya priests still use the church for their rituals, burning incense and candles. Each of the 18 stairs that lead up to the church stands for one month of the Maya calendar year. ABOUT THE ARTIST Jesse Floyd Reed (1920-2011) studied art in New York City at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Students’ League. He held degrees in History and English and completed special advance studies in Asian, African, and Latin American art, history and culture. At the time of his retirement, he was a Professor of the Arts Emeritus at Davis & Elkins College, a position he held for over forty-nine years. A nationally recognized artist since 1947, Professor Reed’s art has been shown in hundreds of museums, libraries, colleges, and universities, including the Boston Museum, National Museum, The Library of Congress, Brooklyn Museum, and Seattle Museum. In his native West Virginia, he is represented in the permanent collections of the Huntington Museum and the Charleston Museum at Sunrise. The recipient of many national and regional awards, Reed was a member of the Salmagundi Club in NY, the Boston Printmakers, the Print Club of Albany, and was a founding member of the West Virginia Water...

This highly stylized portrait depicts a well dressed man in front of a mining property likely in West Virginia. It is very much in the manner of earlier American artists such as Gra...