Lawrence Kupferman Figurative Prints
American
Lawrence Kupferman was born in the Boston area, and he became one of the most important abstract artists to emerge from there in the early 1940s. Kupferman worked as an artist for the WPA in the 1930s, developing a strictly realistic style that depicted Victorian houses and other detailed architectural images.
Around 1943, Kupferman began to integrate more expressionistic forms into his works. He soon moved completely away from the recognizable subject matter and definitively became an abstract painter. In 1946, he studied with the influential German-born artist Karl Zerbe at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Kupferman later attended the Massachusetts College of Art, where he would become a professor and retire as its Head of Painting in 1969. His focus, as it would remain until the late 1960s, was on abstract, marine-like amoeboid forms—intimated, rather than strictly described.
Kupferman was an active participant in a huge thrust in Boston art in the 1940s to create a vibrant art scene that rivaled New York. He has been appropriately credited with bringing Abstract Expressionism to Boston, serving as a critical artistic conduit to New York painters such as Mark Rothko and Hans Hofmann, contacts he made in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he spent his summers beginning in 1946. Kupferman’s unique brand of abstraction integrated with the already burgeoning figurative expressionism in Boston, and he showed at the Boris Mirksi Gallery, arguably the most important Boston gallery at the time. He served as the Chair of the Modern Artists Group and is considered one of the major Boston artists whose numerous exhibitions throughout the world helped establish that city as a vital art scene.
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Artist: Lawrence Kupferman
'Fantasia Americana - 1880' — Mid-Century American Surrealism
By Lawrence Kupferman
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
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. Image size 11 13/16 x 14 3/4 inches; sheet size 18 x 20 1/4 inches. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed.
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...
Category
1940s Surrealist Lawrence Kupferman Figurative Prints
Materials
Drypoint, Etching
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Lawrence Kupferman figurative prints for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Lawrence Kupferman figurative prints available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Lawrence Kupferman in drypoint, engraving, etching and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1940s and is mostly associated with the Surrealist style. Not every interior allows for large Lawrence Kupferman figurative prints, so small editions measuring 15 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of John Hultberg, Jack Zajac, and David Avery. Lawrence Kupferman figurative prints prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $850 and tops out at $850, while the average work can sell for $850.