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Item Ships From: South Carolina
'A Visit to the King of the Waters' — Graphic Modernism
By Fritz Eichenberg
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Fritz Eichenberg, 'A Visit to the King of the Waters' from the suite 'The Adventurous Simplicissimus', wood engraving, 1977, artist's proof apart from the edition of 50. Signed in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 14 x 12 inches (356 x 305 mm); sheet size 17 1/2 x 15 inches (445 x 381 mm). Archivally sleeved, unmatted.
ABOUT THIS WORK
'Simplicius Simplicissimus' (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch) is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in five books by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen published in 1668, with the sequel Continuatio appearing in 1669.
The novel is told from the perspective of its protagonist Simplicius, a rogue or picaro typical of the picaresque novel, as he traverses the tumultuous world of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War. Raised by a peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons. He is adopted by a hermit living in the forest, who teaches him to read and introduces him to religion. The hermit also gives Simplicius his name because he is so simple that he does not know his own name. After the death of the hermit, Simplicius must fend for himself. He is conscripted at a young age into service and, from there, embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, bourgeois domestic life, and travels to Russia, France, and an alternate world inhabited by mermen. The novel ends with Simplicius turning to a life of hermitage, denouncing the world as corrupt.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence.
Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting.
In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists.
In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories.
Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday.
Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...
Category
1970s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'George Washington Bridge (Under Construction)' — 1920s New York City
By Otto Kuhler
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Otto Kuhler, 'George Washington Bridge' (under construction) also titled 'The Cables That Hold it All', etching, 1928, edition unknown. An uns...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
'Taxco Market' — American Modernist Scene of Mexico
By Howard Norton Cook
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Howard Cook, 'Taxco Market', aquatint and etching, 1932-33, edition 30, Duffy 181. Signed and titled in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper; the full shee...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching, Aquatint
Abstract Study of Shapes and Patterns on Sand Dunes, Namibia, Africa, Horizontal
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"Layers of Light"
In this award-winning image, Drew was interested in the way the light hit the sand dunes of Sossusvlei, Namibia creating this breathtaking, ethereal scene.
The p...
Category
2010s Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
A lone white horse sticks out amidst the herd of darker horses in this black and
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"A lone white horse sticks out amidst the herd of darker horses in this black and white image
A black and white image of a herd of horses with one white horse among many darker colo...
Category
2010s Minimalist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Child Reaching' — 1940s American Modernism
By Will Barnet
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Will barnet, 'Child Reaching', woodcut, 1940, edition 25, Cole 82. Signed and titled in pencil. A fine, black impression, on fibrous Japan paper, with full margins (5/8 to 1 3/4 inch...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
Death March — Spanish Civil War, Anti-fascism
By Leon Bibel
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Leon Bibel, 'Untitled (Death March)', brush and ink, c. 1936. Estate stamped, verso. A fine expressionist rendering, on cream wove drawing board, with margins (3/8 to 5/16 inch). Minor toning at the board edges, otherwise in very good condition. Image size 12 5/16 x 9 3/8 inches; sheet size 13 x 10 inches. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
One of a series of powerful Anti-fascist brush and ink drawings created by the artist at the commencement of the Spanish Civil War...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Ink
Lone Wild Horse Looks Over Tall Grass, Meditative, Calming, Equestrian
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"Windy Solitude"
This best-selling image features a single horse on Sable Island as he looks back at the camera. "
The print series Discovering the Horses of Sable Island documents...
Category
2010s Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
The incredible moment in this photograph features the yacht Ranger at high speed
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"The incredible moment in this photograph features the yacht Ranger at high speed
The J-Class racing yacht Ranger races ahead in this incredible shot of a truly magnificent feat of ...
Category
2010s Minimalist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Tenant Farmers' — Depression Era, WPA
By Lou Barlow
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Lou Barlow (Louis Breslow), 'Tenant Farmers', color wood engraving, 1936, edition 25. Signed, titled, and numbered '15/25' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, with fresh c...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
Profile of an African Woman —1920s Modernism
By Boris Lovet-Lorski
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Boris Lovet-Lorski, Untitled (Profile of an African Woman), lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 15 in pencil. Number 15 of Volume 2, a series of 10 lithographs publish...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Judges' from 'In Praise of Folly' — Mid-Century Graphic Modernism
By Lynd Ward
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Lynd Ward, 'Judges' from the series 'Moriae Encomium (In Praise of Folly),' mezzotint, 1943, no edition, proofs only. Signed, dated, and titled in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 1/4 to 2 inches) in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 7 13/16 x 4 7/8 inches (198 x 124 mm); sheet size 10 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches (273 x 206 mm).
Created by the artist for 'Erasmus's Moriae Encomium,' or 'In Praise of Folly,' published by the Limited Editions Club, 1943. A rare, signed, proof impression apart from the Limited Editions Club publication.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lynd Ward is acknowledged as one of America’s foremost wood engravers and book illustrators of the first half of the twentieth century. His innovative use of narrative printmaking as a stand-alone storytelling vehicle was uniquely successful in reaching a broad audience. The powerful psychological intensity of his work, celebrated for its dynamic design, technical precision, and compelling dramatic content, finds resonance in the literature of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Like these classic American writers, Ward was concerned with the themes of man’s inner struggles and the role of the subconscious in determining his destiny. An artist of social conscience during the Great Depression and World War II, he infused his graphic images with his unique brand of social realism, deftly portraying the problems that challenged the ideals of American society.
The son of a Methodist preacher, Lynd Ward, moved from Chicago to Massachusetts at an early age. He graduated from the Teachers College of Columbia University, New York, in 1926, where he studied illustration and graphic arts. He married May Yonge McNeer in 1936 and left for Europe for their honeymoon in Eastern Europe. After four months, they settled in Leipzig, where Ward studied at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking. Inspired by Belgian expressionist artist Frans Masereel's graphic novel ‘The Sun,’ and another graphic novel by the German artist Otto Nückel, ‘Destiny,’ he determined to create his own "wordless" novel. Upon his return to America, Ward completed his first book, ‘God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts,’ published in 1929. ‘Gods’ Man’ was a great success for its author and publisher and was reprinted four times in 1930, including a British edition. This book and several which followed it, ‘Madman’s Drum,’ 1930, ‘Wild Pilgrimage,’ 1932, ‘Prelude to a Million Years,’ 1933, ‘Song Without Words,' 1936, ‘Vertigo,’ 1937; and ‘Last Unfinished Wordless Novel’ (created in the 1960s and published in 2001) were comprised solely of Ward's wood engravings. Ward designed each graphic image to occupy an entire page, the sequence of which conveys the story's narrative.
In 1937, Ward was named Director of the Graphic Arts Division of the Federal Art Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In the following years, Ward went on to illustrate more than one hundred books (some of which he wrote), including classics for the Limited Editions Club Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ Faulkner’s ‘A Green Bough,’ and Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’ and several children’s books. He also produced single-subject wood engravings, paintings, and drawings. His print ‘Sanctuary,’ 1939, was shown at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and ‘Clouded Over,’ 1948, received the 1948 Library of Congress Award and was included in ‘American Prize Prints of the 20th Century’ by Albert Reese. He received the National Academy of Design Print Award (1949), the New York Times Best Illustrated Award (1973), and the Regina Award (Catholic Library Association, 1975). ‘The Biggest Bear,’ a children’s book with illustrations by Ward, was the recipient of the esteemed 1952 Caldecott Medal of the American Library Association.
An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, Ward was a member and board member of the National Academy of Design and the Artists’ League of America. He served several terms as president of the Society of American Graphic Artists and was a member of the American Artists Congress and the Society of Illustrators. Ward exhibited at the American Artists Congress; the National Academy of Design; the John Herron Art Institute; and the Library of Congress. He had a one-person show at Associated American Artists, NY, on the publication of his monograph 'Storyteller Without Words,' 1974; AAA mounted a memorial exhibition in 1986. The May 1976 issue of 'Bibliognost,' a book collector’s publication, was dedicated to Ward. ‘Lynd Ward, His Bookplate Designs,’ an article by Dan Burne Jones, was published in the American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers Yearbook, 1981/82.
In 2001, sixteen years after his death, Rutgers University Libraries published ’Lynd Ward’s Last Unfinished Wordless Novel.’ The blocks were intended to be part of a novel in woodcuts, the first since Vertigo, but Ward did not live to complete the project. Master printer and book designer Barbara Henry collated and printed the twenty-six finished blocks out of the forty-four initially planned for the still unnamed narrative.
In 2010 the Library of America honored Ward’s achievements with the meticulous production of a collection of Ward’s woodcut novels—the first time the Library had gone wordless. The publication replicated his original editions with a single full-size image printed on the right page of each double-page spread. In his introduction to the books, renowned cartoonist/illustrator Art...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Mezzotint
'African Idol' — American Modernism
By Robert Vale Faro
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Robert Vale Faro, untitled (African Idol), serigraph, c. 1940, edition 6. Signed in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on buff wove paper; the full sheet with margins(5/8 to 1 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Very rare. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 8 3/4 x 6 inches (222 x 152 mm); sheet size 11 x 7 1/2 inches (279 x 192 mm).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert Vale Faro (1902-1988) was a well-known modernist architect and artist associated with the Chicago Bauhaus. He received his degree in architecture and design from the Armour Institute in Chicago and worked at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1924-27, where he was influenced by Harry Kurt Bieg and Le Corbusier. Upon his return to Chicago, Faro worked with the important modernist Chicago architects George and William Keck under Louis Sullivan.
Faro founded the avant-garde printmaking group Vanguard in 1945. The group counted Atelier 17 artists Stanley William Hayter, Sue Fuller, and Anne Ryan as New York members and Francine...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Screen
Harbor with Sailboats — Early 20th-Century Modernism
By George Josimovich
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
George Josimovich, Untitled (Harbor with Sailboats) ', linocut, 1923, edition 35. Signed, dated, and annotated '4/35' in pencil. Initialed 'G J' in ...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Linocut
'Baigneuse Debout, à Mi-Jambes' — French Impressionism
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Pierre Auguste Renoir, 'Baigneuse Debout, à Mi-Jambes (Woman Bathing, Standing Up to Her Knees in Water)', 1910, etching, edition not stated, Delteil 23. Unsigned as published. A fin...
Category
1910s Impressionist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
'Tanks #1' — American Precisionism
By Louis Lozowick
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Louis Lozowick, 'Tanks #1', lithograph, 1929, edition 50, Flint 39. Signed, titled, and numbered '11/50' in pencil. Signed with the artist's monogram in the stone, lower left. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, the full sheet with margins (3/4 to 1 7/8 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards.
Image size 13 15/16 x 8 1/16 inches (355 x 204 mm), sheet size 15 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches (400 x 286 mm).
Exhibited: 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', Stephen Coppel, The British Museum, 2008.
Literature: 'Prints and Their Creators, A World History', Carl Zigrosser, Crown Publishers Inc, 1974; 'American Lithographers...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'The Bather' — American Modernism
By Rockwell Kent
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Rockwell Kent, 'The Bather', wood engraving, 1931, edition 120, Burne Jones 63. Signed in pencil. A brilliant, black impression, on cream, wove Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (2 1/2 to 3 1/4 inches); slight skinning at the top sheet edge, verso, otherwise in excellent condition. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 5 3/8 x 7 7/8 inches (137 x 200 mm); sheet size 11 1/8 x 14 1/2 inches (283 x 368 mm).
Impressions of this work are held in the following public collections: Burne Jones Collection (Illinois), Chazen Museum of Art, Chegodaev Collection (Moscow), Kent Collection (New York), National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art; SUNY Plattsburg Art Museum, Princeton University Library, Pushkin Museum (Moscow), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Spector Collection (New York), University of Illinois.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), though best known as a painter, graphic artist, and illustrator, pursued many careers throughout his life, including architect, carpenter, explorer, writer, dairy farmer, and political activist. Born in Tarrytown, New York, Kent was interested in art from a young age. These ambitions were encouraged by his aunt Jo Holgate, an accomplished ceramicist. Jo came to live with the family after Kent’s father passed away in 1887 and took him to Europe as a teenager, undoubtedly kindling his interest in exploring the world.
Kent attended the Horace Mann School in New York City, where he excelled at mechanical drawing. His family’s financial circumstances prevented him from pursuing a career in the fine arts; however, after graduating from Horace Mann in 1900, Kent decided to study architecture at Columbia University.
Before matriculating at Columbia, Kent spent the first of three consecutive summers studying painting at William Merritt Chase’s art school in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. There he found a community of mentors and fellow students who encouraged him to pursue his interest in art. At the end of Kent’s third summer at Shinnecock, Chase offered him a full scholarship to the New York School of Art, where he was a teacher. Kent began taking night classes at the art school in addition to his architecture studies but soon left Columbia to study painting full-time. In addition to Chase, Kent took classes with Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller, where his classmates included the artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper.
Kent spent the summer of 1903 assisting the eccentric painter Abbott Handerson Thayer at his studio in Dublin, New Hampshire—a position he secured through the recommendation of his Aunt Jo. Thayer’s naturalist lifestyle and almost mystical appreciation for natural phenomena greatly influenced Kent; he returned to Dublin for many years to visit Thayer and his family. Thayer gave the young artist time to pursue his work, and that summer Kent painted several views of the New Hampshire landscape, including Mount Monadnock...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
Lion Défendant sa Proie (Lion Defending Its Prey)
By Joseph Hecht
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Joseph Hecht, 'Lion Défendant sa Proie (Lion Defending Its Prey)', engraving, 1931, edition 50, Tonneau-Ryckelynck & Plumart 215. Signed and numbered '18/50' in pencil. A fine impres...
Category
1930s Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Engraving
'Sea And Sky' — 1930s Modernism
By Rockwell Kent
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Rockwell Kent, 'Sea and Sky', wood engraving, edition 150, 1931 (published 1932). A brilliant, richly-inked impression on cream wove Japan; the full sheet with margins (2 to 2 1/2 in...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'The Pimp' — Graphic Modernism
By Fritz Eichenberg
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Fritz Eichenberg, 'The Pimp', wood engraving, 1980, artist's proof before the edition. Signed in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (2 3/16 to 3 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Archivally sleeved, unmatted.
Image size 12 x 9 3/4 inches (305 x 248 mm); sheet size 18 x 14 inches (457 x 356 mm).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence.
Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting.
In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists.
In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories.
Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday.
Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...
Category
1980s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
Kanani (Hawaii)— 1940s Polynesian Portrait
By John Melville Kelly 1
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
John Melville Kelly, 'Kanani (Hawaii)', drypoint, 1946. Signed, titled and annotated 'No 36' in pencil. A superb impression, in dark brown ink, on ...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Drypoint
Jerry Garcia with guide at the Pyramids
By Adrian Boot
Located in Mount Pleasant, SC
Photograph of Jerry Garcia with guide in 1978 at the Pyramids in Egypt. The Grateful Dead played 2 shows in Giza, Egypt on September 15 & 16th.
Signed and numbered by photographer
Category
20th Century Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Together' — Mid-Century Surrealism, Atelier 17
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Ian Hugo, 'Together', from the portfolio 'Ten Engravings'. engraving, 1946, edition 50. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '22/50' in pencil. A fine impression, with delicate overall plate tone, on cream wove paper, the full sheet with wide margins (2 7/8 to 5 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. With the blind stamp 'madeleine-claude jobrack EDITIONS', in the bottom right margin. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 5 7/8 x 4 7/8 inches (149 x 124 mm); sheet size 15 x 11 1/8 inches (381 x 283 mm).
Collection: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Ian Hugo originally created "Ten Engravings" in 1945 and the portfolio included a foreword by his partner and collaborator, Anais Nin. In 1978, Hugo republished the portfolio with Madeleine-Claude Jobrack, an American master printmaker who studied under Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, Paris, and with Johnny Friedlaender. When Jobrack returned to the States she managed the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio in New York before opening her own printing studio, Madeleine-Claude Jobrak Editions.
“The sign of the true artist is one who creates a complete universe, invents new plants, new animals, new figures to transfer to us a new vision of the universe in which dream and reality fuse. Ian Hugo's plants have eyes, the birds have the delicacy of dragonflies, their feathers have the shape of fans. Humor is apparent in every gesture. He uses a fine spider web to give a feeling of flight, speed, lightness. The body of a woman reveals the structure of a leaf, a plant. Wings are moving in a world unified by mythological themes. This is an animated world, humorous and levitating, elusive and decorative, which by its unique forms and shapes gives us the sensation of a rebirth, a liberation from the usual, the familiar, a visit to a new planet.”
—Anais Nin, from the forward to the portfolio ‘Ten Engravings’
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ian Hugo was born Hugh Parker Guiler in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1898. His childhood was spent in Puerto Rico—a "tropical paradise," the memory of which stayed with him and surfaced in both his engravings and his films. He attended school in Scotland and graduated from Columbia University where he studied economics and literature.
Hugo was working with the National City Bank when he met and married author Anais Nin in 1923. The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Nin's diary and Guiler's artistic aspirations flowered. Guiler feared his business associates would not understand his interests in art and music, let alone those of his wife, so he began a second, creative life as Ian Hugo. Ian and Anais moved to New York in 1939. The following year he took up engraving and etching, working at Stanley William Hayter’s experimental printmaking workshop Atelier 17, established at the New School for Social Research.
Hugo began producing surreal images often used to illustrate Nin's books. For Nin, his unwavering love and financial support were indispensable—Hugo was the "fixed center, core... my home, my refuge" (Sept. 16, 1937, Nearer the Moon, The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1937-!939). Fictionalized portraits of Higo and Nin appear in Philip Kaufman's 1990 film drama of a literary love triangle, Henry & June.
Inspired by comments that viewers saw motion in his engravings, Hugo took up filmmaking. He asked the avant-garde filmmaker Sasha Hammid for instruction but was told, "Use the camera yourself, make your own mistakes, make your own style." Hugo embarked on an exploration of the film medium as a vehicle to delve into his dreams, his unconscious, and his memories. Without a specific plan, He would collect resonant images, then reorder or superimpose them, seeking a sense of self-connection through the poetic juxtapositions he created. These intuitive explorations resembled the mystical evocations of his engravings, which he described in 1946 as "hieroglyphs of a language in which our unconscious is trying to convey important, urgent messages."
In the underwater world of his film ‘Bells of Atlantis,’ the light originates from the world above the surface; it is otherworldly, out of place, yet essential. In ‘Jazz of Lights,’ the street lights of Times Square become in Nin's words, "an ephemeral flow of sensations." This flow that she also calls "phantasmagorical" had a crucial impact on Stan Brakhage, who said that without Jazz of Lights (1954), "there would have been no Anticipation of the Night" his autobiographical film which ushered in a new era of experimental modernist filmmaking.
Hugo lived the last two decades of his life in a New York apartment high above street level. In the evenings, surrounded by an electrically illuminated man...
Category
1940s Surrealist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Engraving
'Judgment of Souls' — Surrealist Fantasy
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Zena Kavin, 'Judgment of Souls', lithograph, c. 1935, edition 20. Signed, titled, and numbered '17/20' in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full marg...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Rococo Diptych
Located in Boston, MA
Artist Commentary:
This diptych started several years ago during a public art performance called Nike's Advice. I painted 130 feet of unprimed canvas with the public. It was scary! I don't consider myself a painter. I was having to accept Nike's Advice myself ... as in "Just Do It". Later, I used my sewing machine to stitch decorative lines. Gold-leaf was added before the surface was coated in UV filtering epoxy. The works are mounted with copper roofing nails to a stretcher bar with gold painted sides.
Keywords: painted textile, abstract, mixed media
Artist Biography:
Susan Lenz...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Gold Leaf
'Hold that Tiger' — Mid-century American Surrealism
By Robert Vale Faro
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Robert Vale Faro, 'Hold that Tiger', color lithograph, 1945, edition 16. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '91' and '15/16' in pen. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on heavy, coated, off-white wove paper; the full sheet with margins (13/16 to 1 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 14 x 9 3/8 inches (356 x 239 mm); sheet size 17 x 11 1/4 inches (432 x 285 mm).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert Vale Faro (1902-1988) was a well-known modernist architect and artist associated with the Chicago Bauhaus. He received his degree in architecture and design from the Armour Institute in Chicago and worked at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1924-27, where he was influenced by Harry Kurt Bieg and Le Corbusier. Upon his return to Chicago, Faro worked with the important modernist Chicago architects George and William Keck under Louis Sullivan.
Faro founded the avant-garde printmaking group Vanguard in 1945. The group counted Atelier 17 artists Stanley William Hayter, Sue Fuller, and Anne Ryan as New York members and Francine Felsenthal of Chicago. The Brooklyn Museum mounted a show of Vanguard artists' work in 1946, which subsequently toured several other institutions in the United States.
Faro's visionary graphics from the 1940s are a sophisticated blend of Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and Indian Space...
Category
1940s Surrealist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
The Pacific Northwest is home to an endless array of idyllic scenes
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
The Pacific Northwest is home to an endless array of idyllic scenes
A waterfall cascading into a calm pool of water in Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
Explore the National Parks and t...
Category
2010s Minimalist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Dancing' — 'les années folles' Paris Masterwork, 1928
By Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 'Dancing', lithograph, 1928, edition 30, Davis L-29. Signed, dated, and numbered '8/30' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, printed on cream chine appliqué on heavy off-white wove backing; the full sheet with wide margins (1 3/8 to 4 7/8 inches), in excellent condition. Printed by Desjobert, Paris. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Impressions of this work are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum (Japan).
ABOUT THIS WORK
The French economy boomed from 1921 until the Great Depression reached Paris in 1931. This period called 'Les années folles' or the 'Crazy Years', saw Paris reestablished as a capital of art, music, literature, and cinema. Paris in the 1920s and 1930s was the home and meeting place of some of the world's most prominent painters, sculptors, composers, dancers, poets, and writers. For those in the arts, it was, as Ernest Hemingway described it, "A moveable feast". Paris was home to an exceptional number of galleries, art dealers, and a network of wealthy patrons who offered commissions and held salons.
Pablo Picasso, perhaps the most famous artist in Paris, shared renown with a remarkable group of others, including the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, the Belgian René Magritte, the Italian Amedeo Modigliani, the Russian émigré Marc Chagall, the Catalan and Spanish artists Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, and the German surrealist...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Verdi' — American Modernism - Italian Opera Composer
By Paul Landacre
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Paul Landacre, 'Verdi', wood engraving, 1936, edition 60, (only 14 printed), Wien 188. Signed, titled, and numbered '10/60' in pencil. A fine impression, on cream, laid Japan paper, ...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
This horse's velvet coat and beauty is a vision of equestrian perfection
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"""Nautilus III""
This horse's velvet coat and beauty is a vision of equestrian perfection
A dark horse against a white backdrop with a braided mane
The print series Equus: Light ...
Category
2010s Minimalist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Exhortation' (Priest) — Mid-Century Modernism
By Edward August Landon
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Edward Landon 'Exhortation (Priest)', color serigraph, 1957, edition 28, Ryan 72. Signed, titled, and numbered '21/28' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, with strong color...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Screen
'Four Women' from the suite 'The Beggar's Opera'
By Mariette Lydis
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Mariette Lydis, 'Four Women' from the suite 'The Beggar's Opera', lithograph, edition unknown but small, 1937. Signed in pencil; initialed in the stone, low...
Category
1930s Realist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Still Life — Mid-century Modern
By Charles Quest
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Charles Quest, 'Still Life', 1947, wood engraving, edition 8. Signed, dated, and numbered '3/8' in pencil. Titled and annotated 'wood engraving' in the bottom left margin. A fine impression, on off-white wove paper, with full margins (1 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Charles Quest, painter, printmaker, and fine art instructor, worked in various mediums, including mosaic, stained glass, mural painting, and sculpture. Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after his graduation in 1929 and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris, continuing to draw inspiration from the works of the Old Masters.
After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter, to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. Quest soon became interested in the woodcut medium, which he learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine ‘since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood’ at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were ‘more enjoyable than any other means of expression.’
In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later, Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’, were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’, and the print ‘Still Life with Vise’ was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1951 he was invited by artist-Curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in a one-person show at the Smithsonian's National Museum (now known as the American History Museum). Kainen's press release praised the ‘technical refinement’ of Quest's work: ‘He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.’
At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries in addition to one in his home town. He had won 38 prizes, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951.
Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium’.
An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for Georgetown University's collection. In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division was the recipient of a large body of Quest's work, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, stained glass, and his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including some 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity for further study and appreciation of this versatile and not-to-be-forgotten mid-Western American artist...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'Spirit of Buffalo' — Urban Realism
By Anton Schutz
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Anton Schutz, 'Spirit of Buffalo', etching, edition not stated, c. 1927. Signed in pencil. Annotated 'Spirit of Buffalo 522', in another hand, in the bottom right margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, with skillfully-controlled plate tone, on cream wove Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (1 5/8 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches; sheet size 12 1/4 x 15 7/8 inches.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Etcher, painter, and architect, Anton Schutz was born in Germany in 1894. He studied at the University of Munich, earning a double degree in mechanical engineering...
Category
1920s American Realist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
Angry Skies (Andante Cantabile) — Central Park, New York City
By Louis Lozowick
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Louis Lozowick, 'Angry Skies (Andante Cantabile)', lithograph, 1935; edition 10, AAA 250; Flint 123. Signed in pencil. Signed in the stone, lower left. A fine, richly-inked impressio...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Flowers and Ko-Imari' — Taisho/Showa Shin Hanga Woodblock Print
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Masami Iwata, 'Flowers and Ko-Imari', color woodblock print, c. 1960, edition 250. Signed, and with the artist’s seal, lower right. A superb, painterly impression, with fresh colors,...
Category
1960s Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'Soaring New York' — 1930s American Modernism, New York City
By Howard Norton Cook
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Howard Cook, 'Soaring New York', aquatint, soft-ground etching, roulette, 1931-32, edition 25, Duffy 165. Signed, dated, and annotated 'imp' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked, atmosp...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching, Aquatint
Women Bathing — German Expressionism, Nudes, 1920
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Georg Gelbke, Untitled (Women Bathing), etching, 1920. Signed and dated in pencil. Initialed and dated in the plate, lower right. A fine, richly-inked im...
Category
1920s Expressionist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
'Interlinear K50' — Mid-Century Geometric Abstraction
By Josef Albers
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Josef Albers, 'Interlinear K50', zinc plate lithograph offset to stone printing, 1962, edition 20, Danilowitz 151. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered '14/20' in pencil. A superb, ri...
Category
1960s Abstract Geometric South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Coenties Slip' — Lower Manhattan, Financial District
By Luigi Kasimir
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Luigi Kasimir, 'Coenties Slip', color etching with aquatint, 1927, edition 100. Signed in pencil. Dated in the plate, lower right. Annotated 'NEW YORK HANOVER SQUARE (COENTIES SLIP)'...
Category
1920s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching, Aquatint
Wolf Guardian Peering From the Shadows in a Woodland Landscape
Located in Charleston, US
Valarie Wolf's animal painting "From the Shadows" unveils a majestic wolf, piercingly gazing out from the depths of the forest underbrush, inviting you into a world of enchantment ...
Category
2010s Realist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Oil
'The Wolf and the Little Kids' — Graphic Modernism
By Fritz Eichenberg
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Fritz Eichenberg, 'The Wolf and the Little Kids' from the suite 'Fables with a Twist', wood engraving, 1975-76, artist's proof apart from the edition of c. 50. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Artist’s Proof' in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (7/8 to 1 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Complete with vellum folder with descriptive text in red and black linotype. Printed by master printer Harold McGrath at The Gehenna Press, Northampton, MA. Image size 13 15/16 x 12 1/8 inches (354 x 308 mm); sheet size 16 1/2 x 14 inches (419 x 356 mm). Archivally sleeved, unmatted.
Collection: Harvard Museums.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence.
Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting.
In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists.
In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories.
Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday.
Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...
Category
1970s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
Church at Chichicastenango
By Jesse F. Reed
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Jesse F. Reed, 'Church at Chichicastenango', color etching and aquatint, 1963. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed and dated in the plate, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 3/8 to 2 1/2 inches), in excellent condition.
Chichicastenango, also known as Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, is a town in the El Quiché department of Guatemala, located in a mountainous region about 140 km northwest of Guatemala City. Chichicastenango is a K'iche' Maya cultural center, with the great majority of the municipality's population indigenous Mayan K'iche. The church depicted is the 400-year-old church Iglesia de Santo Tomás. Built atop a Pre-Columbian temple platform, the steps which remain venerated today, originally led to a temple of the pre-Hispanic Maya civilization. K'iche' Maya priests still use the church for their rituals, burning incense and candles. Each of the 18 stairs that lead up to the church stands for one month of the Maya calendar year.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jesse Floyd Reed (1920-2011) studied art in New York City at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Students’ League. He held degrees in History and English and completed special advance studies in Asian, African, and Latin American art, history and culture. At the time of his retirement, he was a Professor of the Arts Emeritus at Davis & Elkins College, a position he held for over forty-nine years.
A nationally recognized artist since 1947, Professor Reed’s art has been shown in hundreds of museums, libraries, colleges, and universities, including the Boston Museum, National Museum, The Library of Congress, Brooklyn Museum, and Seattle Museum. In his native West Virginia, he is represented in the permanent collections of the Huntington Museum and the Charleston Museum at Sunrise.
The recipient of many national and regional awards, Reed was a member of the Salmagundi Club in NY, the Boston Printmakers, the Print Club of Albany, and was a founding member of the West Virginia Water...
Category
1960s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching, Aquatint
'Mazeppa' — 19th-Century French Romanticism
By Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Théodore Géricault and Eugène Lami, 'Mazeppa' from the series 'Oeuvres de Lord Byron', lithograph, 1823, 2nd state of 3, Delteil 94. Rendered by Thé...
Category
1820s Romantic South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Le Cheval (The Horse) — Mid-Century Cubism
By Léopold Survage
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Léopold Survage, 'Le Cheval' (The Horse), color etching, edition 60, 1953. Signed and numbered '46/60' in pencil. Initialed in the plate, lower right. A superb, richly-inked impressi...
Category
1950s Surrealist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
Untitled (Nude in Landscape)
By Boris Lovet-Lorski
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Boris Lovet-Lorski, 'Untitled (Nude in Landscape)', lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 5 in pencil. Number 5 of Volume 1, a series of 10 lithographs published by the ...
Category
1920s Art Deco South Carolina - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Dancers' — 1930s American Modernism
By Charles Turzak
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Charles Turzak, 'Dancers', 1939, wood engraving, edition 100. Signed, titled, and numbered 72/100 in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white Japan paper, with full marg...
Category
Mid-20th Century Art Deco South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
A dark horse rearing up with smoke rising and rock pinnacles in the backdrop
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"A dark horse rearing up with smoke rising and rock pinnacles in the backdrop
Black and white image of a dark horse rearing up with triangular rock formations in the background and ...
Category
2010s Minimalist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'Woolworth Building Under Construction' — Early 20th Century Modernism
By Earl Horter
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Earl Horter, 'The Woolworth Building Under Construction', etching, c. 1912, edition not stated. Signed in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, in warm black ink, with selectively...
Category
1910s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Etching
The Serenade
By Louis Legrand
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
A superb, richly-inked impression, with skilfully wiped plate tone and burr in the drypoint, printed in dark sepia ink on cream laid paper, with the Louis LeGrand watermark in the bo...
Category
1890s Post-Impressionist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Drypoint, Etching, Aquatint
City Scene II — Mid-Century Modernism, Precisionism
By Bernard Brussel-Smith
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Bernard Brussel-Smith, 'City Scene II', wood engraving, 1949, artist's proof, edition 100. Signed, titled, and annotated 'A.P.' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on whit...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'Sailor and His Girl' —Mid-Century Modernism, WWII
By Bernard Brussel-Smith
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Bernard Brussel-Smith, 'Sailor and His Girl', wood engraving, 1941, edition 35. Signed, titled, and numbered '21/35' in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A superb, richly-in...
Category
1940s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
World Class Racing Yachts in Italy, Nautical, Horizontal, Iconic
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"Rainbow Trailed"
The J-Class boats Rainbow and Velsheda sail at near impossible angles as the sailors freely dangle their feet over the edge of the deck.
This award-winning image is in the permanent collection of the Mariners' Museum, Newport News...
Category
2010s Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
Street Corner, L'Ile Saint Louis, Paris — Mid-Century Photogravure
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Rémy Duval, 'Street Corner, L'ile Saint Louis, Paris', photogravure, 1946. A fine, richly-inked impression in warm black ink, on cream wove B.F.K. Rives pap...
Category
1940s Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Photogravure
Madman's Drum (Brothel) — 'Story Without Words' Graphic Modernism
By Lynd Ward
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Lynd Ward, 'Madman's Drum, Plate 41', wood engraving, 1930, edition small. Signed in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white tissue-thin Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (1 5/8 to 2 1/2 inches); a small paper blemish in the upper right margin, away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. A scarce, artist-printed, hand-signed proof impression before the published edition. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches (140 x 95 mm); sheet size 9 5/8 x 7 1/8 inches (244 x 181 mm).
From Lynd Ward’s book of illustrations without words, 'Madman’s Drum', Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, New York, 1930.
Reproduced in 'Storyteller Without Words, the Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward', Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1974.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lynd Ward is acknowledged as one of America’s foremost wood engravers and book illustrators of the first half of the twentieth century. His innovative use of narrative printmaking as a stand-alone storytelling vehicle was uniquely successful in reaching a broad audience. The powerful psychological intensity of his work, celebrated for its dynamic design, technical precision, and compelling dramatic content, finds resonance in the literature of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Like these classic American writers, Ward was concerned with the themes of man’s inner struggles and the role of the subconscious in determining his destiny. An artist of social conscience during the Great Depression and World War II, he infused his graphic images with his unique brand of social realism, deftly portraying the problems that challenged the ideals of American society.
The son of a Methodist preacher, Lynd Ward, moved from Chicago to Massachusetts at an early age. He graduated from the Teachers College of Columbia University, New York, in 1926, where he studied illustration and graphic arts. He married May Yonge McNeer in 1936 and left for Europe for their honeymoon in Eastern Europe. After four months, they settled in Leipzig, where Ward studied at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking. Inspired by Belgian expressionist artist Frans Masereel's graphic novel ‘The Sun,’ and another graphic novel by the German artist Otto Nückel, ‘Destiny,’ he determined to create his own "wordless" novel. Upon his return to America, Ward completed his first book, ‘God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts,’ published in 1929. ‘Gods’ Man’ was a great success for its author and publisher and was reprinted four times in 1930, including a British edition. This book and several which followed it, ‘Madman’s Drum,’ 1930, ‘Wild Pilgrimage...
Category
1930s American Modern South Carolina - Art
Materials
Woodcut
White Horses Running Beneath a Waterfall in Iceland, Color Photography, Vertical
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"Through the Falls"
The famous horses of Iceland pay no attention to the extreme elements of their homeland most would find daunting - including some of the mightiest waterfalls on ...
Category
2010s Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
Equestrian Portrait of a World Class Horse with a Braided Mane, Square
By Drew Doggett
Located in US
"Nautilus II"
A braided mane adds to the perfection of this horse in this classic, detailed equestrian portrait.
The print series Equus: Light & Form focuses on the details of so...
Category
2010s Contemporary South Carolina - Art
Materials
Archival Pigment
'European Landscape' —Mid-century American Surrealism
By Lawrence Kupferman
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Lawrence Kupferman, 'European Landscape', drypoint, edition 50, 1942. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '7/50' in pencil. A superb, finely nuanced impression, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 to 1 3/4 inches); in excellent condition.
Image size 10 7/8 x 13 3/8 inches; sheet size 13 1/8 x 16 1/2 inches. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed.
An impression of this work is included in the permanent collection of the Syracuse University Art Museum.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lawrence Kupferman (1909 - 1982) was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and grew up in a working-class family. He attended the Boston Latin School and participated in the high school art program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the late 1920s, he studied drawing under Philip Leslie Hale at the Museum School—an experience he called 'stultifying and repressive'. In 1932 he transferred to the Massachusetts College of Art, where he first met his wife, the artist Ruth Cobb. He returned briefly to the Museum School in 1946 to study with the influential expressionist German-American painter Karl Zerbe.
Kupferman held various jobs while pursuing his artistic career, including two years as a security guard at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During the 1930s he worked as a drypoint etcher for the Federal Art Project, creating architectural drawings in a formally realistic style—these works are held in the collections of the Fogg Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In the 1940s he began incorporating more expressionistic forms into his paintings as he became progressively more concerned with abstraction. In 1946 he began spending summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met and was influenced by Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and other abstract painters. At about the same time he began exhibiting his work at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston.
In 1948, Kupferman was at the center of a controversy involving hundreds of Boston-area artists. In February of that year, the Boston Institute of Modern Art issued a manifesto titled 'Modern Art and the American Public' decrying 'the excesses of modern art,' and announced that it was changing its name to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The poorly conceived statement, intended to distinguish Boston's art scene from that of New York, was widely perceived as an attack on modernism. In protest, Boston artists such as Karl Zerbe, Jack Levine, and David Aronson formed the 'Modern Artists Group' and organized a mass meeting. On March 21, 300 artists, students, and other supporters met at the Old South Meeting House and demanded that the ICA retract its statement. Kupferman chaired the meeting and read this statement to the press:
“The recent manifesto of the Institute is a fatuous declaration which misinforms and misleads the public concerning the integrity and intention of the modern artist. By arrogating to itself the privilege of telling the artists what art should be, the Institute runs counter to the original purposes of this organization whose function was to encourage and to assimilate contemporary innovation.”
The other speakers were Karl Knaths...
Category
1940s Surrealist South Carolina - Art
Materials
Drypoint