Kontraform Art & Rare Books

'Porto Ercole' Italy (Slim Aarons Estate Edition) A jetty juts out from the rocky shoreline at the Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, Tuscany, August 1973. Beautiful greens of th...

'Las Brisas Hotel' Acapulco (Slim Aarons Estate Edition) Apartments and pools at the La Concha Beach Club in Las Brisas resort in Acapulco, Mexico, January 1968. This photograph ep...

'Speedboat Landing' (Slim Aarons Estate Edition) A Magnum motorboat belonging to Count Filippo Theodoli arrives at the private jetty of the Il Pellicano Hotel in Porto Ercole, Ital...

Takashi Murakami Record Art 2018 (Takashi Murakami Kanye West Kid Cudi): This Takashi Murakami designed cover & record album is for Kids See Ghosts and is the only studio album by t...

after Roy Lichtenstein Title: As I opened Fire Poster Dimensions: 64 x 52 cm This work was conceived in 1966 and published by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterd...

Bokan - camouflage pink, 2009 by Takashi Murakami Offset print, numbered and signed by the artist 19 11/16 × 19 11/16 in 50 × 50 cm Edition 71/300 About the Artist: Takashi Murakami is best known for his contemporary combination of fine art and pop culture. He uses recognizable iconography like Doraemon and cartoonish flowers and infuses it with Japanese culture. The result is a colorful body of work that takes the shape of paintings, sculptures and animations. In the 1990s, Murakami founded the Superflat movement in an attempt to expose the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumeristic culture." The artist plays on the familiar aesthetic of mangas, Japanese-language comics, to render works that appear popular and accessible, all the while denouncing the universality and impersonality of consumer goods. Murakami has done collaborations with numerous brands and celebrities including Kanye West, Louis Vuitton...

Takashi Murakami, Kanye West, Louis Vuitton; Los Angeles 2007 (Murakami Gala): Rare folding invitation published on the occasion of a 2007 reception honoring Takashi Murakami and fashion icon Marc Jacobs with a special performance by Kanye West; October 28th, 2007; MOCA Los Angeles; hosted by Louis Vuitton. Front side imagery features a reproduction of Murakami’s ‘Jellyfish...

Original poster: BATMAN - Museo Dell'Automobile Torino Artist: after Andy Warhol. Size 27.25" x 37" Printed: 1996 in Milan, Italy. Excellent condition. This pop art Italian poster in perfect condition, ready to frame. This is the original first printing of the Museo Dell'Automobile Torino (Italy) Batman, Andy Warhol. 'Viaggio in Italia'. This poster features the artwork for Warhol’s unauthorised 1964 film “Batman Dracula”. Excellent condition. Certificate of Authenticity. Printed in Italy. The exhibition poster was for Nov. 30, 1996 - March 9, 1997. This BATMAN - Museo Dell'Automobile Torino is an Original Vintage Poster, not a reproduction. This poster is in excellent condition. This is an Original Lithograph Vintage Poster; it is not a reproduction. This is an Original Lithograph Vintage Poster; it is not a reproduction. Free Continental USA shipping included (saves $69 1st Dibs...

To celebrate 50 golden years of Pride UK. A special golden disco mix edition of one of my most popular pieces. 5 layer screen print on Heritage white. A celebration of colour and par...

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG Dream of William Burroughs, 1972 Offset lithograph 34 1/2 × 24 inches Edition 103/150 Signed, dated and numbered in black marker on the front Unframed Wonderful e...

This offset lithograph in colors in three panels was created in 2002 and is from the unsigned edition of unknown size measuring
 
25 x 20 ½  in. (63.5 x 52 cm.) each and 25 x 62 in. ...

Vintage gallery exhibition poster. The Galerie Maeght is a gallery of modern art in Paris, France, and Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The gallery was founded in 1936 in Cannes. The Paris gallery was started in 1946 by Aimé Maeght. The artists exhibited are mainly from France and Spain. Since 1945, the gallery has presented the greatest modern artists such as Matisse, Bonnard, Braque, Miró, and Calder. In 1956, Adrien Maeght opened a new parisian venue. The second generation of “Maeght” artists was born: Bazaine, Andre Derain, Giacometti, Kelly, Raoul Ubac, then Riopelle, Antoni Tapies, Pol Bury and Adami, among others. Jean-Paul Riopelle, CC GOQ (7 October 1923 – 12 March 2002) was a painter and sculptor from Quebec, Canada. He became the first Canadian painter (since James Wilson Morrice) to attain widespread international recognition. Born in Montreal, Riopelle began drawing lessons in 1933 and continued through 1938. He studied engineering, architecture and photography at the école polytechnique in 1941. In 1942 he enrolled at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal but shifted his studies to the less academic école du Meuble, graduating in 1945. He studied under Paul-Émile Borduas in the 1940s and was a member of Les Automatistes movement. Breaking with traditional conventions in 1945 after reading André Breton's Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, he began experimenting with non-objective (or non-representational) painting. He was one of the signers of the Refus global manifesto. In 1947 Riopelle moved to Paris and continued his career as an artist, where, after a brief association with the surrealists (he was the only Canadian to exhibit with them) he capitalized on his image as a "wild Canadian". His first solo exhibition took place in 1949 at the Surrealist meeting place, Galerie La Dragonne in Paris. Riopelle married Françoise Lespérance in 1946; the couple had two daughters but separated in 1953. In 1959 he began a relationship with the American painter Joan Mitchell, Living together throughout the 1960s, they kept separate homes and studios near Giverny, where Monet had lived. They influenced one another greatly, as much intellectually as artistically, but their relationship was a stormy one, fueled by alcohol. The relationship ended in 1979. His 1992 painting Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg is Riopelle's tribute to Mitchell, who died that year, and is regarded as a high point of his later work. Riopelle's style in the 1940s changed quickly from Surrealism to Lyrical Abstraction (related to abstract expressionism), in which he used myriad tumultuous cubes and triangles of multicolored elements, facetted with a palette knife, spatula, or trowel, on often large canvases to create powerful atmospheres. The presence of long filaments of paint in his painting from 1948 through the early 1950s[8] has often been seen as resulting from a dripping technique like that of Jackson Pollock. Rather, the creation of such effects came from the act of throwing, with a palette knife or brush, large quantities of paint onto the stretched canvas. Riopelle's voluminous impasto became just as important as color. His oil painting technique allowed him to paint thick layers, producing peaks and troughs as copious amounts of paint were applied to the surface of the canvas. Riopelle, though, claimed that the heavy impasto was unintentional: "When I begin a painting," he said, "I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colours I daub down anywhere and anyhow. But it never works, so I add more, without realizing it. I have never wanted to paint thickly, paint tubes are much too expensive. But one way or another, the painting has to be done. When I learn how to paint better, I will paint less thickly." When Riopelle started painting, he would attempt to finish the work in one session, preparing all the color he needed before hand: "I would even go as far to say—obviously I don't use a palette, but the idea of a palette or a selection of colors that is not mine makes me uncomfortable, because when I work, I can't waste my time searching for them. It has to work right away." A third element, range of gloss, in addition to color and volume, plays a crucial role in Riopelle's oil paintings. Paints are juxtaposed so that light is reflected off the surface not just in different directions but with varying intensity, depending on the naturally occurring gloss finish (he did not varnish his paintings). These three elements; color, volume, and range of gloss, would form the basis of his oil painting technique throughout his long and prolific career. Riopelle received an Honorable Mention at the 1952 São Paulo Art Biennial. In 1953 he showed at the Younger European Painters exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The following year Riopelle began exhibiting at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. In 1954, works by Riopelle, along with those of B. C. Binning and Paul-Émile Borduas represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. He was the sole artist representing Canada at the 1962 Venice Biennale in an exhibit curated by Charles Comfort...