Peter Laszlo Peri Art

Leonor Fini - Cats - Original Engraving Mme.Helvetius' Cats Original etching created in 1985, Printed Signature (LF). Conditions: excellent Edition: 100 Support: Arches paper. Dimensions: Paper dimensions: 44 x 28 cm Editions: Moret, Paris. Leonor Fini is considered one of the most important women artists of the mid-twentieth century, along with Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning – most of whom Fini knew well. Her career, which spanned some six decades, included painting, graphic design, book illustration, product design (the renowned torso-shaped perfume bottle for Schiaparelli’s Shocking), and set and costume design for theatre, ballet, opera, and film. In this compellingly readable, exhaustively researched account, author Peter Webb brings Fini’s provocative art and unconventional personal life, as well as the vibrant avant-garde world in which she revolved, vividly in life. Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 (August 30 – January 18, 1996, Paris) to Italian and Argentine parents, Leonor grew up in Trieste, Italy, raised by her strong-willed, independent mother, Malvina. She was a virtually self-taught artist, learing anatomy directly from studying cadavers in the local morgue and absorbing composition and technique from the Old Masters through books and visits to museums. Fini’s fledging attempts at painting in Trieste let her to Milan, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1929, and then to Paris in 1931. Her vivacious personality and flamboyant attire instantly garnered her a spotlight in the Parisian art world and she soon developed close relationships with the leading surrealist writers and painters, including Paul Eluard, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, who became her lover for a time. The only surrealist she could not abide because of his misogyny was André Breton. Although she repeatedly exhibited with them, she never considered herself a surrealist. The American dealer Julien Levy, very much impressed by Fini’s painting and smitten by her eccentric charms, invited her to New York in 1936, where she took part in a joint gallery exhibition with Max Ernst and met many American surrealists, including Joseph Cornell and Pavel Tchelitchew. Her work was included in MoMA’s pivotal Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism exhibition, along with De Chirico, Dali, Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. In 1939 in Paris she curated an exhibition of surrealist furniture for her childhood friend Leo Castelli for the opening of his first gallery. Introductions to her exhibition catalogues were written by De Chirico, Ernst, and Jean Cocteau. A predominant theme of Fini’s art is the complex relationship between the sexes, primarily the interplay between the dominant female and the passive, androgynous male. In many of her most powerful works, the female takes the form of a sphinx, often with the face of the artist. Fini was also an accomplished portraitist; among her subjects were Stanislao Lepri...

Signed lower right, 'Mary Tift' for Mary Louise Tift (American, 1913-2010), titled, lower center 'Fresh Fish' with number and limitation, lower left, '36/60' and created in 1975. Pap...

The Donkey is an aquatint and drypoint print on chine from one of the deluxe copies of Picasso's 1942 Histoire Naturelle - Textes de Buffon series. The image size is 10.5 x 8 inches,...

One of the main motifs in Georges Braques late printmaking oeuvre is the bird. By depicting the bird as itself or the flight of birds, Braque found what he called the "still life of ...

The Sparrow Hawk is an aquatint and drypoint print on chine from one of the deluxe copies of Picasso's 1942 Histoire Naturelle - Textes de Buffon series. The image size is 10.5 x 8 inches, unsigned as issued, and framed in a contemporary silver and gray moulding. One of about 36 prints that exist with Picasso's remarqued title in French, from the edition of 262 (there were 226 portfolios, some with additional sets on varying papers). Catalogue - Cramer #37 The exceptional etchings from Picasso’s Histoire Naturelle – Textes de Buffon are a masterful combination of sugar-lift aquatint and drypoint, showcasing a full range of gray tonalities. The etchings of animals, birds and insects are considered some of the most beautiful and most unusual examples of Picasso’s graphic work. Roger Lacourière, Picasso’s master printer, pulled the prints for each etching between 1939-1942. It was Lacourière who taught Picasso the sugar-lift aquatint technique which allowed him to mimic the effect of brushstrokes in these etched images. Picasso first explored the technique in his plates for the Vollard Suite, but it was in the creation of the Buffon images that he fully realized its stunning, painterly potential. For the edition, 226 portfolios were produced with the first thirty-six counting as deluxe compilations. These rare deluxe sets were on diverse papers (chine, japon or vergé ancien) and each included a complete additional suite showing Picasso’s title remarques along the bottom. As such, the remarqued versions of the prints are quite rare with just thirty-six of each produced for the edition (with the exception of The Wolf which is never remarqued – the image always fills the entire etching plate). These prints are based on the writings of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who extensively documented the natural world in his monumental work Histoire Naturelle. Picasso’s association with the project to illustrate parts of the Buffon came during a tumultuous time in European history – the prelude to, and early years of, World War II. As the continent was ravaged, Picasso lived through the disaster in Paris, which the Germans occupied in 1940. These prints could be seen as a political statement – Picasso channeling his artistic expression into a form of resistance art...

Temptation of Saint Anthony an etching in the manner of Hendrik Goltzius. Goltzius was born near Viersen in Bracht or Millebrecht, a village then in the Duchy of Julich, now in the ...

An original etching from Chagall’s illustrations for La Fontaine’s Fables, with touches of hand-applied color. Chagall made the plates in the late 1920s for the dealer Ambroise Volla...

Artist: Eileen Alice Soper (English, 1905-1990) Title: "Spring Song" *Signed by Soper in pencil lower right Year: 1924 Medium: Original Etching on cream laid paper Limited edition: 178 Printer: likely Eva Soper, London, England Publisher: H C Dickens, London, England Sheet size: 8.13" x 10.13" Image size: 6.63" x 9.63" Reference: "The Catalogue Raisonne of Prints and Etchings of George and Eileen Soper" - Beetles No. 83, page 119, 141, 157 Condition: Paper trimmed in the margins. A few faint areas of discoloration. It is otherwise a strong impression in very good condition Notes: Provenance: private collection - Boulder, CO. Biography: Eileen Soper was born in 1905 in the Municipal Borough of Enfield and moved to the house where she was to spend the rest of her life in Harmer Green, Welwyn in the Hertfordshire countryside in 1908. The house she later named "Wildings" was built by her father, the artist George Soper...

From David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio, an image from the story of Rapunzel. The Enchantress with the baby Rapunzel references a Heironymus...

A very good impression of this etching. Signed and numbered 35/50 in pencil by Picasso. Printed by Crommelynck, Mougins. Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris. From "347 Gravures...

The frontispiece for Hockney’s Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio and book features Catherina Dorothea Viehmann, the elderly German woman who recounted fairy tales to ...

Hardground Etching

Animal Kingdom (Magnificent Jungle Cats) Etching, 1953-1955 Signed and titled in pencil by the artist (see photos) Annotated: "First Proof" (see photo) Estate stamp verso (see photo)...

Etching with aquatint on white wove paper with a deckle edge, 23 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches (598 x 317 mm); sheet 30 x 22 1/2 inches (762 x 571 mm), full margins. Signed and numbered 4/10 i...

This etching from David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio depicts the somewhat obscure story Old Rinkrank, which Hockney chose to illustrate beca...