Robert Kipniss Prints and Multiples

"Landscape" is an original signed lithograph by the artist Robert Kipniss. It depicts a farm-like landscape with small huts and rolling plains. 11 1/2" x 15" art 21" x 25" frame A...

Summer, 1977 c. 1977 By Robert Kipniss (1931- ) Signed Lower Right Edition VIII/XX Lower Left Unframed: 18" x 14" Framed: 24.5" x 20.5" Robert Kipniss, painter and printmaker, was born in New York City in 1931. He creates essentially monochromatic*, stylized vistas with natural and architectural elements intended to evoke an elegiac, nearly surrealistic mood in haunting, silent landscapes; the melancholy of nostalgia. Trees, in mid and far-distance, form clusters or act as misty individuals containing a haunted, indefinable presence, witnesses to the foreground drama of more specific shape, form and detail, often a close-up tree. Kipniss studied at the Art Students League* in 1947; Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, 1948-50; and the University of Iowa, receiving a BA degree in English literature in 1952, and an MFA in painting and art history in 1954. The artist employs a meticulous technique combining a multiplicity of specific strokes, whether with brush, pencil or print-maker's needle and burin*, to create the essence of his generalized, non-specific forms. Light and darkness are clearly Kipniss' compositionally constructive elements. They also exist as contestants in the emotional drama at the heart of each work of art. The contrast, and sometimes combat, between these two opposites, symbolically represent with blackness -- ideas of threat, fear, trouble, evil; with whiteness safety, redemption, fulfillment and good. In Kipniss' 1995 mezzotint*, Clear Vase and Landscape, with a foreground image of precisely leafy stalks, the vase holding them, nearly invisible in its transparency, suggests an almost Salvador Dali-like surrealist device. This central image dominates but seems to invite association with, and commentary from, the surrounding clumps and individual round-topped, yet cedar-like trees. His mezzzotint, For Stella," 1997, depicts a gently twisting, curving, pale and smoothly-barked foreground, leafless tree limb or trunk, like a female human body, suggesting weakness, fatigue, an inability to deal with the staccato background screen of textured bush that seems to uncomfortably impinge upon it. This print is arguably a metaphor for a delicate soul struggling to overcome the prickly difficulties of domineering life. The classic mezzotint process, invented in the middle of the 17th Century, is the reverse of most of the other print-making media, since the artist works from a black ground to increasingly lighter areas. The copper plate is first roughened by a "rocker," creating a burr over the entire surface (the more burr left intact, the more ink it holds, the darker the final finished print). The artist, Robert Kipniss, in this instance, gradually burnishes, smoothes down the burr in varying degrees to produce the gradations of lights and darks of the final design. The deepest darks in the final picture are those areas on the plate that have been little touched after the initial roughening. Mezzotint relies on shade and tone rather than outline for its effect, which fits the Kipniss style of atmospheric* masses of value. A recent oil painting by Robert Kipniss, Hillside Silhouettes, 2001, 40 x 29, is somewhat more complex in composition than many, with four cubically-constructed houses each set in their own zones, seemingly unrelated to one another, with receding hills and similarly isolated, increasingly misty trees beyond. In his career, Robert Kipniss has had over 40 one-man shows since the first in New York in 1951, including an important retrospective exhibition at the Associated American Artist Gallery, New York in 1977. Many of these one-man exhibitions have been mounted by over 50 museums in the United States, South America and Europe, including the Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modem Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of Congress and British Museum in London. Robert Kipniss is represented in the permanent collections of the institutions above, among many others, as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Art Institute; Yale University Museum; National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He was elected to the National Academy of Design* in 1980, and to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London in 1998 Robert Kipniss can be referenced in numerous publications, including Who's Who in American Art from the 1950s to the present, and multiple reviews in periodicals like Art News, Art in America and Art Forum. There are also three important catalogues raisonne published on his work. Robert Kipniss has received many awards: 1965 Ohio University National Drawing Show, Purchase Prize 1976 National Academy of Design, New York City, The Ralph Fabri Prize 1978 The Print Club of Philadelphia, Charles M Lea Prize 1979 Charlotte Printmakers Society, Purchase Award Society of American Graphic Artists, Printmaking Award Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH, Honorary Doctorate 1980 Elected to the National Academy of Design, New York City Audubon Artists, New York City, Silver Medal National Academy of Design, New York City, The Leo Meissner...

Window Sitting by Robert Kipniss, American (1931) Date: circa 1975 Lithograph, Signed and numbered in Pencil Edition of 59/120 Image Size: 10.5 x 13.75 inches Frame Size: 24.5 x 25.5...

Reference G100 Robert Kipniss was born in New York City in 1931. His love of art was quickly fostered and nurtured, in large part due to his parents, both of whom were artists. He b...

Artist: Robert Kipniss– American (1931-) Title: Untitled Landscape Year: circa 1980 Medium: lithograph Image size: 11.5 x 16 inches. Framed size: 2...

“Window w/shade, chair, vase & trees” is a mezzotint engraving created by Robert Kipniss in 2017. The paper size is 13.50 x 12 inches and the printed image size is 7.75 x 7 inches. T...

Artist: Robert Kipniss, American (1931 - ) Title: Shack with a Tree in Front Year: circa 1980 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 90 Image Size: 14 x 10 inches...

This impression is from an edition of 50 and is listed as GO64in the catalogue raisonne Robert Kipniss, an American painter and printmaker, was born in New York City. He studied at ...

Signed in pencil by the artist Edition: 250 (89/250) Printed by George Miller & Sons, NY Stone polished out Published by Merrill Chase Galleries From 1968 into 1990, Kipniss created lithographs that followed the style and content of his paintings, whether generally or specifically. A commission from a print publisher in 1968 for five editions of lithographs precipitated his adoption of lithography as a medium. "Kipniss's first lithographs were done in black and white, but by 1970 he was also working in color. He taught himself "to lay in the most delicately light silvery tones on the surface of the limestone by maintaining an exceptionally sharp point on the lithographic pencil and drawing with no pressure other than the weight of the pencil itself." He built up a support so that his hand and wrist could "dangle" over the stone. By 1990 Kipniss had completed about 450 editions of lithographs, usually of 90 to 250 impressions, at the Burr Miller studio...

Signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 250 (89/250) Printed by George Miller & Sons, NY Stone polished out Published by Merrill Chase Galleries Condition: Very good Full sheet

Signed and numbered in pencil Created: September 1973 Edition: Edition: 250 (115/250), total edition 300 Printed by George Miller & Sons, NY Stone canceled Published: by Merrill C...

Artist: Robert Kipniss, American (1931 - ) Title: Interior with Cup and Kettle Year: 1986 Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: AP XV Image Size: 12 x 10 inches ...