Nancy Graves Abstract Prints

Nancy Graves 5745, for the Jewish Museum, 1984 Silkscreen on paper Signed, numbered 5/90 and dated in graphite pencil on the front; bears publishers' blind stamp front left corner 30 1/4 × 40 1/2 inches Unframed Commissioned by the Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. List Graphic Fund for The Jewish Museum, New York Signed, numbered and dated in graphite pencil on the front; bears publishers' blind stamp front left corner. Commissioned by the Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. List New Year's Graphic Fund for The Jewish Museum, New York. During the 1980s, various artists were commissioned to create a print celebrating the Jewish New Year. This is the silkscreen renowned sculptor Nancy Graves created to celebrate the year 5745 of the Jewish Calendar, beginning in September 1984 (Rosh Hashanah). This work was published in a limited edition of 90. The number 90 has special significance in Jewish gamatria (numerology) for several reasons, including the fact that it equals five times life - or Chai. The number for Chai, meaning "Life " s 18, and 18 x 5 = 90. This is a magical number in Judaism. All of the works were published in editions that were multiples of 18, or the Life. In her lifetime, Nancy Graves did not receive the renown or acknowledgement that her ex-husband and former Yale School of Art classmate Richard Serra did, but she is finally getting the recognition she richly deserves. Biography: Nancy Graves (1939 – 1995) is an American artist of international renown. A prolific cross-disciplinary artist, Graves developed a sustained body of sculptures, paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints. She also produced five avant-garde films and created innovative set designs. Born in Pittsfield Massachusetts, Graves graduated from Vassar College in 1961. She then earned an MFA in painting at Yale University in 1964, where her classmates included Robert Mangold, Rackstraw Downes, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, as well as Richard Serra with whom she was married from 1964 to 1970. Five years after graduating, her career was launched in 1969 when she was the youngest artist — and only the fifth woman — to be selected for a solo presentation at the Whitney Museum of Art. Graves’ work was subsequently featured in hundreds of museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide, including several solo museum exhibitions. She was awarded commissions for large-scale site-specific sculptures and her work is in the permanent collections of major art museums. A frequent lecturer and guest artist, her work was widely documented during her lifetime. In 1991 she married veterinarian Dr. Avery Smith. Graves travelled extensively and was fully engaged with the cultural and intellectual issues of her times. Her brilliant career and life were cut short by her untimely death from cancer at age 54. From a point of view that she described as “objective,” Graves transformed scientific sources, such as maps and diagrams, into artworks by re-producing their complex visual information in detailed paintings and drawings. Investigating the intersections between art and scientific disciplines, Graves created compelling, formally rigorous, yet ultimately expressive works of art that examine concepts of repetition, variation, verisimilitude, and the presentation and perception of visual information. Based in SoHo, New York, Graves gained prominence in the late 1960s as a post-Minimalist artist for innovative camel, fossil, totem, and bone sculptures that were hand formed and assembled from unusual materials such as fur, burlap, canvas, plaster, latex, wax, steel, fiberglass and wood. Made in reaction to Pop and Minimalism, these works reference archaeological sites, anthropology, and natural science displays. Suspended from the ceiling or clustered directly on the floor, these early sculptures also engage with Conceptualist ideas of display. For her Whitney Museum presentation Graves exhibited three seemingly realistic sculptures of camels in an installation that evoked taxidermy specimens and questioned issues of verisimilitude in art and science, particularly in light of their hand patched and painted fur surfaces. The exhibition elicited wide spread critical responses and established her artistic significance. After intensely engaging with sculpture in the early 1970s, Graves returned to painting. Her detailed pointillist canvasses re-produced — in paint — images culled from documentary nature photographs, NASA satellite recordings, and Lunar maps, commingling scientific exactitude with abstraction. Resuming sculpture in the late 1970s, Graves was among the first contemporary artists to experiment with bronze casting. She re-invigorated the traditional lost wax technique by assembling cast found objects into unique improbably balanced sculptures, with bright polychrome surfaces and distinctive patinas. Throughout the 1980s Graves became widely recognized for her increasingly large and graceful open-form sculpture commissions. At the same time, she also expanded her drawing, painting, and printmaking practice and made large gestural watercolors. Then, in the late 1980s she created wall-mounted works that combined her explorations of sculpture, painting, form and color. In these large-scale pieces, she mounted high relief polychrome sculptural elements to the surfaces and edges of painted shaped canvases so that patterned shadows were cast onto the paintings and surrounding wall. By the 1990s Graves was casting in glass, resin, paper, aluminum, and bronze, combining these varied materials and colors into daring sculptures with moving parts. As she proceeded in all the media she mastered, Graves increasingly re interpreted and transmuted forms sourced from her own earlier artwork — rather than from outside research — creating elaborate compositions that form a layered a-temporal archaeology of her own visual production. Nancy Graves’ pioneering art...

Nancy Graves Nancy Graves: A Survey 1969/1980 (Hand signed and inscribed to Dick Polich of Tallix), 1980 Offset lithograph poster (hand signed, dated and inscribed) signed, dated and...

Nancy Graves, American (1939-1995) Borborygmi (1988) aquatint, drypoint, gold leaf and screenprint on Fabriano Artistico paper pencil hand signed by artist lower right, numbered 4/50 (there were also 6 Artist Proofs of this edition) plate: 49.5 x 49.5 inches Publisher: 2RC Edizioni d'Arte, Rome Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995) was an American woman sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the moon. Her works are included in many public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg). When Graves was just 29, she was given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time she was the youngest artist, and fifth woman to achieve this honor. Graves was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Her interest in art, nature, and anthropology was fostered by her father, an accountant at a local museum. After graduating from Vassar College in English Literature, Graves attended Yale University, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees. Fellow Yale Art and Architecture alumni of the 1960s include the painters, photographers, and sculptors Brice Marden, Richard Serra, Chuck Close, Janet Fish, Gary Hudson...

Nancy Graves Calibrate, 1981 16 color etching, aquatint, engraving and lithograph. Printed from 5 copper plates, 1 zinc plate and 1 stone Hand signed, numbered 12/30 dated on the fro...

This edition was commissioned in 1980 by Lincoln Center to commemorate its 10th Annual Community Festival. The signed and numbered edition is 144 was printed at Fine Creations. Born in 1940 (Pittsfield, MA), Nancy Graves explored the interplay between the replication of nature and the formal values of abstract art in her wide variety of works throughout her life. Thought she first gained attention with her realistic, life-sized camel sculptures, she was later inspired to draw, paint and print by visual representations of natural phenomena, like weather and moon maps...

To Be Little Consciousness is an original contemporary artwork realied by Nancy Graves in 1991. Mixed colored aquatint and soft varnish. Hand signed an...

Nancy Graves Original Graham Gallery poster (hand signed by Nancy Graves), 1968 Extremely rare vintage offset lithograph poster (hand signed by Nancy Graves) hand signed by Nancy Graves in pencil on the front Frame included: held in museum quality wood frame with UV plexiglass Publisher: Graham Gallery This late 1960s vintage Graham Gallery poster is hand signed by Nancy Graves on the front. It was published on the occasion of her "Camels" exhibition - a groundbreaking show in the artist's young life, as she died at age 54 of breast cancer. (People forget how brave she was, a sharp counterpoint to the style of the macho Minimalists of the era, like her ex husband Richard Serra.) The following year -- in 1969 - Nancy Graves became the first woman ever to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum. We've never seen another of these posters anywhere else in the world - let alone one hand signed by Nancy Graves. Elegantly framed in a museum quality wood frame with UV plexiglass Measurements: Frame: 17 x 17.5 x 1.5 inches Work: 10 x 10.75 inches About Nancy Graves: Nancy Graves (1940–1995) was born in Massachusetts. Her father worked as an accountant at the local Berkshire Museum, where art was displayed with natural history. He encouraged his daughter’s early interests in art, nature and anthropology — interests which endured for the rest of her life. After graduating from Vassar College with a degree in English Literature, Graves attended Yale University, where she earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Art, studying alongside Chuck Close, Robert Mangold and Brice Marsden. Following Yale, she won a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, and began studying painting in Paris — where she also married sculptor Richard Serra, whom she had met at Yale (and from whom she would divorce in 1970). Moving on to Florence soon after, she would live a somewhat nomadic life, spending time in countries that included Morocco, Kashmir, India, Egypt, Peru, Australia and Canada. From a point of view that she described as “objective,” Graves transformed scientific sources, such as maps and diagrams, into artworks by re-producing their complex visual information in detailed paintings and drawings. Investigating the intersections between art and scientific disciplines, Graves created compelling, formally rigorous, yet ultimately expressive works of art that examine concepts of repetition, variation, verisimilitude, and the presentation and perception of visual information. Based in SoHo, New York, Graves gained prominence in the late 1960s as a post-Minimalist artist for innovative camel, fossil, totem, and bone sculptures that were hand formed and assembled from unusual materials such as fur, burlap, canvas, plaster, latex, wax, steel, fiberglass and wood. Made in reaction to Pop and Minimalism, these works reference archaeological sites, anthropology, and natural science displays. Suspended from the ceiling or clustered directly on the floor, these early sculptures also engage with Conceptualist ideas of display. For her Whitney Museum presentation Graves exhibited three seemingly realistic sculptures of camels in an installation that evoked taxidermy specimens and questioned issues of verisimilitude in art and science, particularly in light of their hand patched and painted fur surfaces. The exhibition elicited wide spread critical responses and established her artistic significance. After intensely engaging with sculpture in the early 1970s, Graves returned to painting. Her detailed pointillist canvasses re-produced — in paint — images culled from documentary nature photographs, NASA satellite recordings, and Lunar maps...

Signed and numbered in pencil with studio blindstamp Color screenprint on Arches Cover paper 29.75 x 35.5 inches

Borborygmi, 1988 Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil in lower margin Aquatint with colors 49 x 49 inches