Martin Lewis Signed Limited Ed. Etchng Street Booth, Tokyo New Years Eve, 1927
By Martin Lewis
Located in Studio City, CA
A beautiful and exceedingly engaging limited edition etching/print titled "Street Booth, Tokyo New Years Eve" by famed Australian/American painter/artist/master printmaker Martin Lewis (1881-1962). This image was created in 1927.
Lewis was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia in 1881 but migrated to the United States in 1900. After working in San Francisco and New York he then traveled to Japan to study Japanese art for two years. Lewis eventually returned to the US and settled back in New York in the early 1920s where he would experience his most artistically productive breakthrough period (between 1925-1935) in which he would create some of his most well-known works including this piece. Today, Lewis is universally considered to be one of the most important American printmakers of the twentieth century - a master of light and shadow.
This work is a drypoint etching, printed in black ink on cream wove paper with full margins. A brilliant, luminous, and richly-inked impression. From a noted (McCarron, Paul. The Prints of Martin Lewis: A Catalogue Raisonne, p. 60) edition of 40 recorded impressions. According to McCarron, this is the most accomplished of Lewis' Japan prints: "New Year''s Day is an important holiday in Japan. The Japanese traditionally decorate their streets and homes with shimenawa, knotted straw ropes blessed and purified by Shinto priests...
Category
1920s American Vintage Pietro Lazzari Prints