Valerio Romagnoli Abstract Prints

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-light. Details: + Title: Layered Torn Paper III...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-...

This vertical abstract monotype layers asymmetrical shapes against a soft, gradient background. Shades of dark brown and bright red complement lighter coral and a sky blue hue that t...

Artist: Kazuhide Yamazaki (Japanese-American, 1951-2023) Title: "A Glass of Red Wine" *Signed and dated by Yamazaki in pencil lower right Year: 1981 Medium: Original Monotype on Arch...

Beautiful 1994 monotype painting by American artist, David Chamberlain (b.1950). Summer Blues. Oil on Arches paper, image measures 9.75 x 11.75 inches; sheet measures 22 x 30 inches. The subtle variations of the oil application are quite lovely. Titled and signed by the artist in pencil, lower margin and on reverse. Excellent, clean condition with no damage or restoration. Unframed: sheet is loose with no backing. SHIPS ROLLED IN TUBE David Chamberlain (American, b Canton, Ohio 1949) has been a full-time artist since 1977, and has created more than 2000 original works in both two and three dimensions. Over 100 of his works appear in the collections of recognized arts institutions and museums, worldwide. A serious and passionate musician (a cappella jazz singer with three recording albums and over 700 concerts in this avocation), Chamberlain's artistic approach and imagery is inspired by studies of musical patterns and relationships. Other influences include topology, poetry, design and flying. His sculptures are noted for their playful explorations of lyrical, melodic edges and harmonious spaces. The surfaces are all one continuous form; the insides become the outsides and vice-versa; the edges are all one line. Mediums include mahogany, bronze, titanium, gold, and ceramic/porcelain. His paintings reflect an enthusiasm for composition and improvisation. Chamberlain has developed a way to create original oil paintings using methods adapted from monotype processes incorporating a light table and mirrors, an etching press, and a variety of hands-on tools (including fingers, rollers, static electricity and blowing)... but no brushes. This method, sometimes called the Chamberlain Method, makes possible the intense collaborations he is known for, where he and another artist work on the same painting at the same time. Called Duett Painting, this mutual and simultaneous way for two artists to paint together attempts to involve the backgrounds of each, directly and profoundly. There are no rules, and there is no place to hide whoever the artists are appears in the composition. As each artist's marks influence the other's, the painting takes on a momentum of its own, compelling the artists toward a new direction neither would have pursued on their own. Chamberlain has worked with over 100 artists, musicians, dancers, poets and creative people from the USA, Asia, Europe, South America and Africa. About half of his paintings are collaborative duetts; half are conventional solo works using these techniques. His studio is based near Boulder, Colorado. He is married, with two children, a dog and three cats. EDUCATION MLA University of Colorado 2002 Landscape Architecture MFA University of Pennsylvania 1977 Sculpture & Printmaking BA Princeton University 1971 Architecture & Design SELECTED EXHIBITIONS Consulate of Japan, San Francisco, CA 1999, 1998 Major Shows Muse a Muse' Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1997, 1999 Retrospective: "Solos, Duets & Concertos" Muskegon Mus. of Art, MI 1996 "Duets" Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE 1995 MacLaren/Markowitz Gallery, Boulder, CO 1991 Retrospective: McKissick Museum of Art, Columbia, SC 1990 Retrospective: The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA 1988 Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA 1981, 1984, 1988 Gibson Gallery, SUNY at Potsdam, NY 1987 Arlene McDaniel Galleries, Simsbury, CT 1986 Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Old Lyme, CT 1985, 1986 Gallerie Obussier, Nantucket, MA 1985 New Acquisitions Gallery, Syracuse, NY 1983 Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY 1983 COMMISSIONS: Operhall Suite; [Series of 6 original works] Muskegon Museum of Art 1994 Symphony Suite; Gibbes Museum & Charleston Symphony Orchestra 1994 Gospel Suite in F; New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA 1994 Eroica; Morgridge Auditorium, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 1992 Balletté; Southworth Library, Canton College, Canton, NY 1991 A Une Passante; M. C. Wallace Library, Wheaton College, Norton, MA 1991 Festivale; K. B. K. Foundation, Boston, MA 1990 A Une Passante; SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY 1989 Balletté; Ensign-Bickford Corp., Simsbury, CT 1987 Torus; Stratus Computer, Inc., Marlboro, MA 1986 Rondella; BNWC, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 1985 Viole, Ayre; Asset Management, Inc., Essex, CT 1983 Cantata; Horne Library, Babson College, Wellesley, MA 1981 COLLECTIONS Museums Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, England Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA British Museum, London, England Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC Currier Gallery & Museum, Manchester, NH Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA Davis Museum of Art, Wellesley, MA DeCordova Museum, Linclon, MA Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY Farnsworth Museum of Art, Rockland, ME Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville,TN Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, England Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC Gibson Gallery & Museum, SUNY Potsdam, NY Greenville County Art Msueum, Greenville, SC Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY McKissick Museum of Art, Columbia, SC Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute of Art, Utica, NY Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC Nelson Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA San Diego Museum, San Diego, CA Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA Taylor Museum/CSFAC, Colorado Springs, CO University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT Institutions American Embassy, Tokyo, Japan [selected] Arjo Wiggins/Arches S.A., Annonay, France Bank of America, Boston, MA Boso Yusi Company, Tokyo, Japan Boston Ballet, Boston, MA Canadian Foreign Ministry, Ottawa, Canada Chase Manhattan Bank, Vietnam Embassy of Japan, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates FIA Institute, Tokyo, Japan Fidelity Ventures & Associates, Boston, MA Frederik Meijer Sculpture Gardens, Grand Rapids, MI Gauteng Legislature, Gauteng, South Africa German Embassy to Vietnam, Hanoi, Vietnam Helix Technology Corporation, Longmont, CO Ito-En Company, Tokyo, Japan JAFCO America Ventures, Boston, Palo Alto, Tokyo Japanese Consulates: Boston, MA; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco, CA Japanese Foreign Ministry, Tokyo, Japan Japan External Trade Organization, New York, Tokyo Kepner-Tregoe Company, Princeton, NJ Kobe Steel, Ltd Tokyo, Kobe Mochida Medicines, Inc., Tokyo Monsanto, European Division, Brussels, Belgium New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA Nueva Set-Kei, Inc. Tokyo, Japan Opinion Research Company, Princeton, NJ PAR Associates, Inc., Boston, MA Price, Waterhouse & Company, Greenwich, CT Princeton Club of Japan, Tokyo, Japan Saint Joseph's Heart Hospital, Lexington, KY Spencer, Fane & Browne; Shugert & Thomson, Kansas City, MO Temple Society of Concord, Syracuse, NY T. Rowe Price, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO University of Wisconsin School of Business, Madison, WI Vietnam Embassy to Canada, Ottawa, Canada Yankelovich, Skelly & White, Stamford, CT COLLABORATIONS Johannesburg, South Africa (& Artist Proof Studio) 1997 Duetts with: Kagiso Pat Mautloa, Durant Sihlali, Mmakgabo Sebidi, Dumisane Mabaso, Nhlanhla Xaba, Pepe Abela, Vincent Baloyi, Ntepe Osiah Masekwameng, Gordon Gabashane, Sokhaya Nkosi Vietnam (& Indochina Arts Project) 1995 Fine Arts Associations, Saigon, Hue and Hanoi; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Hanoi Duetts with: Do Minh Tam, Hoc Hai, Huy Oanh, Le Anh Van, Le Thong, Le Van Suu, Manh Tuan, Mai Khanh, Nghia Duyen, Thuc Ban, Tran Khan Chuong, Tran Luong Studio Duetts 1995-2001 With: Yuji Kishimoto (Architect -- Japan/USA), Emi Tajima (Japanese master caligrapher), Nguyen Quynh Nhu (Vietnam), Eduardo Chavez & Arturo Miranda (Mexico), Kyi May Kaung (Burmese Poet), Patrick Moraz (Swiss/American composer/performer), Jingalu (Aboriginal Australian artist), Rungsak Dokbua (Thailand), and Americans Don Grusin (Composer/performer), Dave Grusin (Composer/performer), Harry Skoler (Composer/performer), Sarah Schneider (Dancer/choreographer), Sally Ranney (artist/humanist), Cleo Parker Robinson (Dancer/choreographer) China (PRC) 2001-2004 Proposal for an Artistic Collaboration with China, 2001-2004 (38 pages). Involving ten Chinese Artists, streaming on the internet, development of 160 museum-quality Duett paintings for world-wide exhibition; budget 1.6 million USD. HIGHER EDUCATION Visiting Artist [Associate Professor One-year appointment] 1990/1991 Art Department, University of South Carolina Adjunct Professor 1991-1994 Art Department, Rivier College, Nashua, NH Fellow/Panelist The Aspen Institute Aspen, CO 2000 Conference on World Affairs [Univ of Colo, Boulder] 1990-1998 Visiting Artist Haverford School, Bryn Mawr, PA 1999 Clemson University, Clemson, SC 1997, 1998 African Institute of Art, FUNDA Soweto, South Africa 1997 Princeton University 1996 Williams College 1995 Bradford College 1994, 1998 College of Charleston 1994 University of Pennsylvania 1993 University of South Carolina 1990, 1994 SUNY Albany 1992, 1993 Pine Manor College 1987, 1989 Bentley College 1988 Simon's Rock/Bard College 1988 Brandeis University 1986 Lyme Academy of Fine Arts 1985, 1986 Emerson College 1985 Harvard University 1984, 1985 Mount Holyoke College 1984 Syracuse University 1983 Colorado College 1977 Director; Artist in Residence 1974-1977 Arts College House, University of Pennsylvania Taught Drawing (figure & still-life) and Photography Initiated Interdisciplinary Program: Dance, Music, Poetry, Theatre, Film, Architecture, Art SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS Instructor, Photography & Visual Arts 1974-1976 Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts Chair, Performing Arts Department 1971-1974 Purnell School Instructor, Visual Arts Department 1970-1974 Purnell School [Taught (& developed syllabi for) 21 Studio arts courses] Juror, College Entrance Examination Board Area: Fine Arts 1972 AWARDS Selection Who's Who: in American Art; in the East; in the World Grants Krasner-Pollack Foundation Emergency Grant, 1999 Indochina Arts Project (Ford Foundation) 1994 Individual Artist Grant, South Carolina Arts Commission 1991 K. B. K. Foundation, 1991, 1994 High Meadow Foundation, 1990 Ford Venture Fund Grant [Univ. of Pennsylvania] 1975-1977 Haas Memorial Fund Fellowship, 1976 GRANTS IN KIND Kodak, Rochester, NY Papeteries Canson & Montgolfier, Annonay, France; Royal Talens BV Oil Paints, Apeldoorn, Holland Takach Etching Press Corp., Albuquerque, NM South African Airlines; American Airlines Korean Airline; Trans World Airlines PUBLICATIONS Film segmant Video Jukebox DeCordova Museum of Art, Linclon, MA 1999 Film David Chamberlain: Artistry in Motion {30 minutes} SC-ETV/PBS 1992 Book Melodic Forms: The Sculpture of David Chamberlain {75 pages, color} 1990 David Godine, Publisher Boston, MA Videotape Search for Perfection; {16 minutes} FIS/Pucker Safrai 1982 Award: Red Ribbon Category: The Arts American Film Festival, New York INTERVIEWS All Things Considered, National Public Radio Weekend Edition, Monitor Radio & Public Radio International CNN Headline News, Atlanta, GA International News Scene, Reuters Press International, New York/Hong Kong Terra Infirma, Corp. for Public Broadcasting BBC World, London Art Scene, S. Carolina Public Radio Jazz Times, Blue Lakes Public Radio, Grand Rapids, MI Conversations with Jean Feraca, Wisc. Public Radio, Madison, WI WBZ-TV Boston, MA WCNY-TV Syracuse, NY WNPE-TV Watertown, NY WSBK-TV Boston, MA WERS-Radio Boston, MA RELATED EXPERIENCE Designs Arts College House (Program) ; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 1975 Performing Arts Center (Architectural); Purnell School, Pottersville, NJ 1973 Fine Arts Center (Architectural); Purnell School, Pottersville, NJ 1971 Diplome Centre Audio Visuel Langues Modernes, Vichy, France 1973 School for International Training, Experiment in International Living, Putney, VT 1973 Graduate Credits Teaching Studio Art Institute, Colorado College, 1972 Consultant Sculpture Walk Project Univ. of South Carolina, Architectural Facilities Planning 1990/91 "How to create, fund and impliment a self-sufficient world-class sculpture collection" Speaker "[Man] In The Arena" , Haverford School, Haverford, PA 2000 "Architecture & Painting" Clemson University Dept of Art & Architecture, AIA Lecture 1997 Reflections on Creativity" Am. Inst. of Architects Convention, Highlands, NC 1994 "Neurons, Notes & Sketches", Conference on Art & Mathematics Albany, NY 1993 "Music into Sculpture", Conference on Art & Mathematics Albany, NY 1992 "On the Creative Process", Empire State Plaza Art Collection Albany, NY 1993 "Creativity and Fullfillment", Conference on Health & Spirituality Boston, MA 1991 Vocalist & Cahoots (jazz a cappella quartet) 1974-present Album Recordings: "Released" (1993) ; Arranger "Haven't We Met" (1991); All Good Children (octet) 1972-74 Album: "All Good Children" (1980); Canto Ergo Sum (sextet) 1971-72; The Footnotes (double sextet) 1967-1971 Album: "Another Summer...

Pierre Andre Obando creates process oriented abstract paintings. He was born in Belize City, Belize and grew up in the Caribbean, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Miami, Fl and Jackson, MS. Pierre Obando completed his MFA at Hunter College and completed his undergraduate studies at New World School of the Arts, Miami, Fl. His work was featured in the Queens International Biennial in 2004, and 2006 at the Queens Museum of Art. His work has been in group exhibitions at Angela Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Rockland Center for the Arts, West Nyack, NY; Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY; MACO Mexico Art Fair in Mexico City; Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Royale Projects, Indian Wells, CA; The Painting Center, New York, NY; and Dean Project, New York, NY. In 2008, he had a solo exhibition at Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY and in 2009, at project space show at Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY. He has participated in the Atlantic Center for the Arts Artists-in-Residence Program. In the fall of 2012, he participated in the group show Caribe Now, at the Nathan Cumming Foundation, which was organized by El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. Contemporary Pattern and Decoration piece, The original movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The P&D movement wanted to revive an interest in minor forms such as patterning which at that point was equated with triviality. The prevailing negative view of decoration was one not generally shared by non-Western cultures, The Pattern and Decoration movement was influenced by sources outside of what was considered to be fine art. Blurring the line between art and design, many P&D works mimic patterns like those on wallpapers, printed fabrics, and quilts. There is a close connection between the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Feminist art movement. The P&D movement arose in opposition to the Minimalist and Conceptualist movements. Mary Grigoriadis, Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Zakanitch were early proponents of this style. The artist lives and works in New York City. Education: 2001 MFA, Painting, Hunter College, New York, NY 2000 Study Abroad, Slade School, UCL, London, United Kingdom 1997 BFA, Painting, New World School of The Arts, Miami, FL Solo Exhibitions: 2015 ‘Like New’, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY 2009 ‘Nowhere’, Rush Arts, New York, NY 2008 ‘Noise’, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY Group Exhibitions: 2018 ‘Revival: Contemporary Pattern and Decoration’, El Museo at Hostos, Bronx, NY Including artists: Abelardo Cruz Santiago Pierre Obando Antonio Pulgarín Keisha Scarville Mickalene Thomas and others. 2017 Locust Projects Contemporary in Miami benefit auction including artists Dara Friedman, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Larry Bell, and more 2017 ‘Browsing Chamber’, Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 ‘#BemisPainters, 1982-2015’, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE 2015 ‘Spat Spell’, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY 2013 ‘Un-Natural Constellations’, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York, NY 2012 ‘Caribe Now’, Nathan Cummings Foundation/El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY 2012 ‘Lucid Fence’, Dean Project, New York, NY 2012 ‘Abstract Gambol’, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY 2012 ‘Reenacting Sense’, Yace Gallery, Long Island City, NY 2010 ‘Continuing Color Abstraction’, The Painting Center, New York, NY 2009 ‘West/East’, Royale Projects, Indian Wells, CA 2009 ‘Alternative Abstraction’, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Including works by Stephen Antonakos, Warren Isensee, Gary Lang, Melissa Meyer and Katherine Sehr...

This is a monotype print, a unique print with no other editions. This monotype on delicate Asian paper layers geometric shapes in yellow, coral, red and blue on a soft blue gray back...

This is a monotype, a unique print with no other editions. The square print on delicate Asian paper layers geometric shapes in navy, light yellow, green and dark coral on a light blu...

"Arroyo" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. The print is a break from the usual bright coloring of Summers' images, though is rendered in his typical style and fields of unmodeled color. A pair of trees stand front and center before an arroyo, a Spanish term for an intermittently dry creek, running out to the ocean. A white sunrise glows in the distance beyond the sea. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form. 14.25 x 14 inches, artwork Numbered from the edition of 120 This print was commissioned by the Madison Print Club, Madison, WI Carol Summers (1925-2016) worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for its large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world, and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction, and Icarus) was shown for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content, and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision that would have a significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain, and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind, and Arch of Triumph...

Pierre Andre Obando creates process oriented abstract paintings. He was born in Belize City, Belize and grew up in the Caribbean, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Miami, Fl and Jackson, MS. Pierre Obando completed his MFA at Hunter College and completed his undergraduate studies at New World School of the Arts, Miami, Fl. His work was featured in the Queens International Biennial in 2004, and 2006 at the Queens Museum of Art. His work has been in group exhibitions at Angela Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Rockland Center for the Arts, West Nyack, NY; Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY; MACO Mexico Art Fair in Mexico City; Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Royale Projects, Indian Wells, CA; The Painting Center, New York, NY; and Dean Project, New York, NY. In 2008, he had a solo exhibition at Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY and in 2009, at project space show at Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY. He has participated in the Atlantic Center for the Arts Artists-in-Residence Program. In the fall of 2012, he participated in the group show Caribe Now, at the Nathan Cumming Foundation, which was organized by El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. Contemporary Pattern and Decoration piece, The original movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The P&D movement wanted to revive an interest in minor forms such as patterning which at that point was equated with triviality. The prevailing negative view of decoration was one not generally shared by non-Western cultures, The Pattern and Decoration movement was influenced by sources outside of what was considered to be fine art. Blurring the line between art and design, many P&D works mimic patterns like those on wallpapers, printed fabrics, and quilts. There is a close connection between the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Feminist art movement. The P&D movement arose in opposition to the Minimalist and Conceptualist movements. Mary Grigoriadis, Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Zakanitch were early proponents of this style. The artist lives and works in New York City. Education: 2001 MFA, Painting, Hunter College, New York, NY 2000 Study Abroad, Slade School, UCL, London, United Kingdom 1997 BFA, Painting, New World School of The Arts, Miami, FL Solo Exhibitions: 2015 ‘Like New’, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY 2009 ‘Nowhere’, Rush Arts, New York, NY 2008 ‘Noise’, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY Group Exhibitions: 2018 ‘Revival: Contemporary Pattern and Decoration’, El Museo at Hostos, Bronx, NY Including artists: Abelardo Cruz Santiago Pierre Obando Antonio Pulgarín Keisha Scarville Mickalene Thomas and others. 2017 Locust Projects Contemporary in Miami benefit auction including artists Dara Friedman, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Larry Bell, and more 2017 ‘Browsing Chamber’, Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 ‘#BemisPainters, 1982-2015’, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE 2015 ‘Spat Spell’, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY 2013 ‘Un-Natural Constellations’, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York, NY 2012 ‘Caribe Now’, Nathan Cummings Foundation/El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY 2012 ‘Lucid Fence’, Dean Project, New York, NY 2012 ‘Abstract Gambol’, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY 2012 ‘Reenacting Sense’, Yace Gallery, Long Island City, NY 2010 ‘Continuing Color Abstraction’, The Painting Center, New York, NY 2009 ‘West/East’, Royale Projects, Indian Wells, CA 2009 ‘Alternative Abstraction’, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Including works by Stephen Antonakos, Warren Isensee, Gary Lang, Melissa Meyer and Katherine Sehr...

"India" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. Here, Summer's abstract language for landscape imagery is taken to its most extreme: The image offers a view of a highly stylized waterfall, with red water falling down behind green foliage below. A hint of light blue at the lower left suggests a continuation of the water's flow. Above, purples and yellows mist upward from the power of the water. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form. Summers' signature can be found in pencil at the bottom of the rightmost blue form, with the title and edition at the bottom of the leftmost blue form. A copy of this print can be found in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 37.25 x 24.88 inches, artwork 48.5 x 35.5 inches, frame Numbered 44 from the edition of 75 Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision which would have significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind and Arch of Triumph, a new look prevailed. These woodcuts were larger in size and in color. Some incorporated metal leaf in the creation of a collage and Summers even experimented with silkscreening. Editions were now between 20 and 50 prints in number. Most importantly, Summers employed his rubbing technique for the first time in the creation of Fantastic Garden in late 1957. Dark Vision of Xerxes, a benchmark for Summers, was the first woodcut where Summers experimented using mineral spirits as part of his printmaking process. A Fulbright Grant as well as Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation followed soon thereafter, as did faculty positions at colleges and universities primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During this period he married a dancer named Elaine Smithers with whom he had one son, Kyle. Around this same time, along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers pioneered what is now referred to as the “monumental” woodcut. This term was coined in the early 1960s to denote woodcuts that were dramatically bigger than those previously created in earlier years, ones that were limited in size mostly by the size of small hand-presses. While Baskin chose figurative subject matter, serious in nature and rendered with thick, striated lines, Summers rendered much less somber images preferring to emphasize shape and color; his subject matter approached abstraction but was always firmly rooted in the landscape. In addition to working in this new, larger scale, Summers simultaneously refined a printmaking process which would eventually be called the “Carol Summers Method” or the “ Carol Summers Technique”. Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. His woodcuts reveal a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several of his woodcuts throughout his career he has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. The best examples of this are Dream, done in 1965 and the later Flash Flood Escalante, in 2003. In the majority of his woodcuts, Summers makes the blocks slightly larger than the paper so the image and color will bleed off the edge. Before printing, he centers a dry sheet of paper over the top of the cut wood block or blocks, securing it with giant clips. Then he rolls the ink directly on the front of the sheet of paper and pressing down onto the dry wood block or reassembled group of blocks. Summers is technically very proficient; the inks are thoroughly saturated onto the surface of the paper but they do not run into each other. The precision of the color inking in Constantine’s Dream in 1969 and Rainbow Glacier in 1970 has been referred to in various studio handbooks. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly onto the block. However, by following his own method, Summers has avoided the mirror-reversed image of a conventional print and it has given him the control over the precise amount of ink that he wants on the paper. After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which act as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface softening the shapes and diffusing and muting the colors. This produces a unique glow that is a hallmark of the Summers printmaking technique. Unlike the works of other color field artists or modernists of the time, this new technique made Summers’ extreme simplification and flat color areas anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal. By the 1960s, Summers had developed a personal way of coloring and printing and was not afraid of hard work, doing the cutting, inking and pulling himself. In 1964, at the age of 38, Summers’ work was exhibited for a second time at the Museum of Modern Art. This time his work was featured in a one-man show and then as one of MoMA’s two-year traveling exhibitions which toured throughout the United States. In subsequent years, Summers’ works would be exhibited and acquired for the permanent collections of multiple museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Summers’ familiarity with landscapes throughout the world is firsthand. As a navigator-bombardier in the Marines in World War II, he toured the South Pacific and Asia. Following college, travel in Europe and subsequent teaching positions, in 1972, after 47 years on the East Coast, Carol Summers moved permanently to Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. There met his second wife, Joan Ward Toth, a textile artist who died in 1998; and it was here his second son, Ethan was born. During the years that followed this relocation, Summers’ choice of subject matter became more diverse although it retained the positive, mostly life-affirming quality that had existed from the beginning. Images now included moons, comets, both sunny and starry skies, hearts and flowers, all of which, in one way or another, remained tied to the landscape. In the 1980s, from his home and studio in the Santa Cruz mountains, Summers continued to work as an artist supplementing his income by conducting classes and workshops at universities in California and Oregon as well as throughout the Mid and Southwest. He also traveled extensively during this period hiking and camping, often for weeks at a time, throughout the western United States and Canada. Throughout the decade it was not unusual for Summers to backpack alone or with a fellow artist into mountains or back country for six weeks or more at a time. Not surprisingly, the artwork created during this period rarely departed from images of the land, sea and sky. Summers rendered these landscapes in a more representational style than before, however he always kept them somewhat abstract by mixing geometric shapes with organic shapes, irregular in outline. Some of his most critically acknowledged work was created during this period including First Rain, 1985 and The Rolling Sea, 1989. Summers received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Bard College in 1979 and was selected by the United States Information Agency to spend a year conducting painting and printmaking workshops at universities throughout India. Since that original sabbatical, he has returned every year, spending four to eight weeks traveling throughout that country. In the 1990s, interspersed with these journeys to India have been additional treks to the back roads and high country areas of Mexico, Central America, Nepal, China and Japan. Travel to these exotic and faraway places had a profound influence on Summers’ art. Subject matter became more worldly and nonwestern as with From Humla to Dolpo, 1991 or A Former Life of Budha, 1996, for example. Architectural images, such as The Pillars of Hercules, 1990 or The Raja’s Aviary, 1992 became more common. Still life images made a reappearance with Jungle Bouquet in 1997. This was also a period when Summers began using odd-sized paper to further the impact of an image. The 1996 Night, a view of the earth and horizon as it might be seen by an astronaut, is over six feet long and only slightly more than a foot-and-a-half high. From 1999, Revuelta A Vida (Spanish for “Return to Life”) is pie-shaped and covers nearly 18 cubic feet. It was also at this juncture that Summers began to experiment with a somewhat different palette although he retained his love of saturated colors. The 2003 Far Side of Time is a superb example of the new direction taken by this colorist. At the turn of the millennium in 1999, “Carol Summers Woodcuts...