Wisconsin - Abstract Prints

"Requiem" is an original etching and aquatint by Joan Snyder. The artist signed the piece, and the edition is of 120. This piece features abstract, expressionist text and an striking portrait of a woman with red lipstick on a pink background. 25 5/8" x 20" art 32" x 26" frame Joan Snyder was born on April 16, 1940, in Highland Park, New Jersey. She received her AB from Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1962), and an MFA from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1966). She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974) and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1983). Snyder lives in Brooklyn and Woodstock, New York. Although Snyder’s paintings are often placed under various art-movement umbrellas—Abstract...

"Untitled 1970 C.P. #235" is an original color lithograph with blended ink signed by the artist Garo Zareh Antreasian. It is editioned 10/60 in the center lower left margin with grap...

"East River Dance" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and wrote the edition number, 77/275, in the lower left corner wi...

"Finest Hope" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and wrote the edition number, 182/300, in the lower left with graphite...

"Graceful Touch" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower center, and wrote the title and "AP 1" (artist's proof #1). It features a...

"Romeo's Paradise" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right then titled/editioned 130/300 in the lower left with graphite. It...

"Invading Knight" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and wrote the title/edition number 200/275, in the lower left corn...

"Boldest Native" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. This piece features a pile of apples with abstract textures. The artist signed the piece lower right and titled it...

"In Real Form" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and titled/editioned "A/P" in the lower left with graphite. This piec...

"In The Clear" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed, titled, and dated the artwork in lower center. This piece is an artist's proof. It features a she...

"Casual Encounter" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed the piece lower right and titled it lower left. This artwork is edition number 147/300. It fea...

‘Venus & Shooting Stars Over the Mountain’ is a reproduction giclée print on canvas, signed by the artist in the lower center. It is based after the original Mixed Media piece. Alte...

"The Bighorn at Night" is an original woodcut signed and titled by the artist, Carol Summers. It is edition 48/50. Catalogue raisonné listing: cat. 105...

"Sunset After Storm" is an original woodcut signed by the artist, Carol Summers. It depicts the sky and mountains in green, red, and blue. It is edition 39...

"Bacchanale" is an original color lithograph by Andre Masson. This piece is from the Je Reve (I Dream) portfolio and is edition number H.C. XVV/XVV. Masson signed the piece in pencil...

Kees van Dongen (b. 1877, Delfshaven – d. 1968 Monte Carlo) He is considered a Fauvist, but his style is still nevertheless closely related to the German Expressionists. He is appr...

"Fan Shape with Dancers" is a silkscreen print by Schomer Lichtner in blue and pink. The print is signed in pencil lower right and is edition 13/200. In this work, the Matissean arabesque figures...

"Departing Beauty" and "Dreams" are two sides of one double-sided original lithograph by Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha. These illustrations were pages 94 & 93 of "Ilsee, Princess...

'Improvisation 7' second ed. woodcut from 'Klänge' is a woodcut print created by Wassily Kandinsky. The present woodcut print comes from the second edition of 'Klänge (Sounds),' a book of original graphics and poetry by Wassily Kandinsky. The title of the album and of this print, 'Improvisation,' demonstrated Kandinsky's interest in music and how abstract musical forms could be translated into images on a two-dimensional surface. This particular composition is difficult to read, but through the abstraction, one can make out various figures and a landscape beyond. Originally carved and printed in 1911, this second edition print was done ca. 1938. It is a woodcut in black ink on woven paper. Signed with encircled 'K' in the block, lower right (from the book, signed in ink, ed. 117/300) Image Size: 7 1/2" x 5 inches Frame Size: 22 1/4" x 18 3/4" Ref. Roethel 124 Artist Bio: The Museum of Modern Art described 'Klänge (Sounds)' as follows: Vasily Kandinsky's self-described "musical album," Klänge (Sounds), consists of thirty-eight prose-poems he wrote between 1909 and 1911 and fifty-six woodcuts he began in 1907. In the woodcuts Kandinsky veiled his subject matter, creating increasingly indecipherable images (though the horse and rider, his symbol for overcoming objective representation, runs through as a leitmotif). This process proved crucial for the development of abstraction in his art. Kandinsky said his choice of media sprang from an "inner necessity" for expression: the woodcuts were not merely illustrative, nor were the poems purely verbal descriptions. Kandinsky sought a synthesis of the arts, in which meaning was created through the interaction of, and space between, text and image, sound and meaning, mark and blank space. The experimental typography shows his interest in the physical aspects of the book. Klänge is one of three major publications by Kandinsky that appeared shortly before World War I, alongside Über die Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) and the Blaue Reiter almanac...

Ilya Bolotowsky's Red/Blue/Black Diamond from around 1970, immediately shows the deep influence of Piet Mondrian's New-Plasticism. Bolotowsky first saw Mondrian's paintings in the 19...

"Stabile with Red Sun Galerie Maught" is an original color lithograph by Alexander Calder. The Stabile is a black topsy-turvy statue taking up most of the piece. A red sun sits to th...

'Figural Abstraction' is an original block print by American artist and teacher Sylvia Spicuzza. The image, printed in white ink against a grey paper, presents bold and graphic figur...

"Original Lithograph VIII" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher" in 1975. It depicts M...

Gicleé print on white wove paper after original ca.1960 oil on canvas. Art: 13" x 9" Frame: 23" x 18.75" Signed in the image, lower left.

Art: 11-1/4 x 11-7/8 Color lithograph, signed (2/10) Joseph Rozman was born on December 26, 1944 in Milwaukee, WI. He was the first artist to have a solo exhibition at the David Barnett Gallery...

Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper. Signed and titled by artist. 24.25" x 24.25" art 34.88" x 34.63" frame Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second ...

Joan Miró produced this original color lithograph especially for Rafael Alberti's text 'Maravillas con Variaciones Acrósticas en el Jardín de Miró' (Wonders with Acrostic Variations ...

Art: 16"x 15-3/4" Frame: 18-3/4"x 18-3/4" Giclee print on board after 2006 mixed media textile Stacy Wiatrak is a textile artist from Milwaukee, Wisc...

Sheet: 9 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches Plate: 5.75 x 5.88 inches Frame: 14 x 14 inches Etching (A/P) Joseph Rozman was born on December 26, 1944 in Milwaukee, WI. He was the first artist to ...

Photo Giclee print, signed lower right by Michael MacDonald. 17 3/4 x 11 3/4 art 29.375 x 23.50" frame

"Caliban" is an original color lithograph by Andre Masson. It features abstract marks and designs in brown over a background of pink and yellow. 10" x 7 1/2" art 20 1/2" x 18" fram...

"Fig Trees-Antibes" is a signed (lower right) color lithograph by Paul Guiramand. It depicts leaves in light green covering most of the surface as well as two...

The present woodcut print comes from 'Klänge (Sounds),' a book of original graphics and poetry by Wassily Kandinsky. This first edition was released in an edition of 300, each book signed and numbered by the artist. The title of the album and this particular print, 'Improvisation,' demonstrated Kandinsky's interest in music and how abstract musical forms could be translated into images on a two-dimensional surface. This particular composition is difficult to read, but through the abstraction, one can make out various figures and a landscape beyond. 7.5 x 5 inches, image 22 x 19.5 inches, frame Woodcut in black ink on laid paper (watermark Van Gelder Zonen) Signed with encircled 'K' in the block, lower right Framed to conservation standards using 100 percent acid free archival materials including silk-lined matting with 1/4 inch bevel, museum glass, and a gold-gilded moulding Ref. Roethel 124 The Museum of Modern Art described 'Klänge (Sounds)' as follows: Vasily Kandinsky's self-described "musical album," Klänge (Sounds), consists of thirty-eight prose-poems he wrote between 1909 and 1911 and fifty-six woodcuts he began in 1907. In the woodcuts Kandinsky veiled his subject matter, creating increasingly indecipherable images (though the horse and rider, his symbol for overcoming objective representation, runs through as a leitmotif). This process proved crucial for the development of abstraction in his art. Kandinsky said his choice of media sprang from an "inner necessity" for expression: the woodcuts were not merely illustrative, nor were the poems purely verbal descriptions. Kandinsky sought a synthesis of the arts, in which meaning was created through the interaction of, and space between, text and image, sound and meaning, mark and blank space. The experimental typography shows his interest in the physical aspects of the book. Klänge is one of three major publications by Kandinsky that appeared shortly before World War I, alongside Über die Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) and the Blaue Reiter almanac...

'Flowers' is an original linocut by Wisconsin-based artist Schomer Lichtner. The composition presents a scattered floral still life amongst abstracted shadows and forms, rendered with Lichtner's quintessential abstract sensibilities. This print is one from a series that each depict abstracted subjects in black silhouette, taking pleasure in the materiality of the linocut technique. The free forms of the flower resemble the lyrical mid-century works of the French artist Henri Matisse, which combined with these material concerns demonstrate Lichter's modern sensibilities. The prints from this series are unusual because of how below the image, Lichtner also includes his Chinese seal and a linocut remarque of a cow, each of which act as an additional signature of the artist on the artwork. Linocut in black and red on Permalife white wove paper 4 x 5.25 inches, image 11.5 x 8.75 inches, sheet 16.5 x 13.63 inches, frame Signed in pencil, below image, lower right. Edition 1/100 in pencil, below image, lower left. Chinese signature stamp in red, below image, lower right. Remaque of a cow in red, below image, lower right. Permalife watermark to paper. Framed to conservation standards in a shadow-box style mounting, using 100 percent rag matting, museum glass, and housed in a silver-finish wood moulding. Overall excellent condition with no creases or discoloration. Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner was well known for his whimsical cows and ballerinas and abstract imagery. He and his late wife Ruth Grotenrath, both well-known Wisconsin artists, began their prolific careers as muralists for WPA projects, primarily post offices. Lichtner also painted murals for industry and private clients. Schomer was a printmaker and produced block prints, lithographs, and serigraph prints. His casein (paint made from dairy products) and acrylic paintings are of the rural Wisconsin landscape and farm animals. He became interested in cows when he and Ruth spent summers near Holy Hill in Washington County. According to David Gordon, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Schomer Lichtner had a tremendous joie de vivre and expressed it in his art. Schomer Lichtner was nationally known for his whimsical paintings and sculptures of black- and white-patterned Holstein cows...

Wolf Letter Poster Series Curated by Christophe Boutin and Mélanie Scarciglia for Untitled, Miami Beach, 2017. 26 1/4" x 18" art 28.25" x 20" frame

This original lithograph is one of six produced by Joan Miró especially for the fourth volume of the catalogue of his lithographs. These are excellent examples of his later work and ...

"Braque Graveur" is an original color lithograph poster signed with initials by the artist Georges Braque. It depicts a moth or butterfly landed on a black abstract form. There are b...

‘Celebration’ is an artist’s proof giclée print, signed and dated by the artist in the lower right. This piece is a part of Barnett’s ‘Morph Dog Series,’ so named for his use of a “morph dog”—a dog-shaped foam sculpture that transforms into a cube when turned inside out—to paint. Against a muted horizon, multicolored rings ignite the sky like fireworks as confetti cascades to the bottom of the frame; rows of morph dogs further ornament the display in red and blue. Giclée print on watercolor paper AP I/XXV 48 x 36 in, print 57.5 x 46.75 in, frame Signed and dated in lower right "AP I/XXV" in lower left Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting and housed in a gold finish wood moulding. David Barnett, an artist, collector, appraiser and gallerist has been passionate about art from the early age of five. David’s career as an art dealer began at age nineteen when, as a fine arts student, he sponsored an exhibition of work by fellow student artists. In 1966, he opened his first gallery in a converted basement apartment at Wisconsin Avenue and 21st Street. In 1985 David moved his gallery from Wisconsin Avenue into the Old Button Mansion on State Street and has been active ever since. David’s talents for recognizing undervalued artists and for meeting the needs of art lovers, art collectors and artists have created a vibrant, flourishing gallery and collection of over 6,000 works of art. David was born and raised in Wisconsin. He has been painting in watercolors, acrylics, oil pastels as well as fine art photography. David has more than 10 different series he has developed over the years. They include Abstract, Surrealism, Morph Dog, Up North Birch Bark, Impressions of Mexico City, Southwest, Fireworks, Famous Artist Paying Homage and Garden Panorama. Influential artists include Vermeer, Miro, Kandinsky, Chagall, Nolde and Klee. David has been featured in many magazines, newspapers and public television programs regarding his beautiful gallery, collection and knowledge and passion of fine art. David also has work in the permanent collection Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona. Since its opening in 1966, The David Barnett Gallery has flourished to become Wisconsin's premier gallery and has the most diverse range of art available in any Wisconsin gallery, including works of art that represent more than 600 artists. The gallery also offers custom framing, art appraisals...

"Pura Vida" is an original color woodcut signed by Carol Summers. A multi-colored piece shows a waterfall with red flames behind it in the middle of the piece. On the left stands a tree with yellow leaves on a hill. To the right is a rainbow. This is an excellent example of Summer's printmaking, not just because of the technique and imagery, but because it numbered 1 of the edition of 125. In addition, it contains a personal inscription to the Milwaukee gallerist David Barnett, who has championed the work of Summers and produced catalogs of his work. Indeed, this print appears as no. 189 in the David Barnett Gallery's 1988 catalogue raisonné of Summer's woodcuts. Feel free to inquire if you would like to purchase a copy of the catalogue raisonné along with your Carol Summers print. Art: 24.25 x 24.75 in Frame: 36 x 35 in signed lower right titled and inscribed to David [Barnett] lower right edition (1/125) lower right 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...

'Mel Swimming in Beaver Lake (Blue)' is an original digital artwork by Wisconsin-based artist and swimmer Melodee Liegl – the first digital artist represented by our gallery! As a pr...

'Mel Swimming in Beaver Lake (Blue)' is an original digital artwork by Wisconsin-based artist and swimmer Melodee Liegl – the first digital artist represented by our gallery! As a pr...

"Elizabeth Stein Gallery A/P" is a color lithograph poster by Ilya Bolotowsky. This piece features an abstract and geometric design in yellow. 40" x 26" Born in Russia in 1907, Ilya Bolotowsky left his native country in his early childhood. The family was forced to emigrate as a result of his parent’s anti-Communist sentiments. They traveled first to Constantinople, then settled in New York City in 1923. Bolotowsky enrolled at the National Academy of Design in 1924. He tried out many styles in this period, ranging from the representational and classical to the abstract and expressionistic. In the early 1930s he became a designer of textiles. In 1932 Bolotowsky spent ten months in Europe. Although he was already familiar with prevailing modernist movements, the opportunity to study a wide range of these works and to meet some of the artists who had made them affected Bolotowsky profoundly. As a result of this trip, Bolotowsky began to synthesize aspects of Cubism with the abstract Surrealism of artists like Miro and Arp. These softer, floating forms gave way to a rectilinear geometry as he became more influenced by the Constructivists and Mondrian. Upon his return to the United States, Bolotowsky married his fellow painter Esphyr Slobodkina...

"The Prairie School Collection - Rug" is an offset lithograph poster with gold foil. This piece advertises an exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs. 34 7/8" x 22" art 36" x 23...

"Original Lithograph XI" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher" in 1975. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract s...

"Jusqu'a L'Abstraction" is a lithograph poster by Wassily Kandinsky. This poster depicts abstract forms in purple, pink, blue, and black and was created for the Maeght gallery in Par...

"Sculptural Objects" is an original color lithograph by Henry Moore. The artist signed the piece lower right. This is from an edition of 3,000. It features abstract, biomorphic figur...

"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...

This is an abstract etching and aquatint by American artist James Rosenquist with colorful red, blue, green, and yellow shapes. It is signed and dated in pencil. 17 3/4" x 35 3/4" p...

In this untitled serigraph, Vincent DiMattio combines the aesthetics of the space age with Pop Art sensibilities and techniques. In the postwar era of the 1950s and 1960s, the United States was in the midst of a period of economic growth for the middle class, and so the trappings and imagery of middle class life became the subjects of a number of artists. While figures like Andy Warhol focused on images of celebrities and soup cans, here DiMattio looks to robots and rockets. At the far left, a figure appears with a round green head and a small clamping arm. To the right, a form like a tank with phallic protrusions, one with a head like the form of a space ship. These signs all alight with the space age toys...

‘Impressions of Pinnacle Peak, AZ Looking West From Dick & Sherry Miller's House’ is an artist’s proof giclée print after the original 2001 watercolor, s...

'Stabiles' is an original lithograph poster after Alexander Calder and published by Galerie Maeght in 1971. Calder had produced the stones for this lithograph a year earlier in 1970 ...

'Field' is an original linocut by Wisconsin-based artist Schomer Lichtner. The composition presents fields of flowers, trees and grasses below a cloudy sky, but rendered with Lichtner's quintessential abstract sensibilities. This print is one from a series that each depict abstracted subjects in black silhouette, taking pleasure in the materiality of the linocut technique. The free forms of the plants resemble the lyrical mid-century works of the French artist Henri Matisse, which combined with these material concerns demonstrate Lichter's modern sensibilities. The prints from this series are unusual because of how below the image, Lichtner also includes his Chinese seal and a linocut remarque of a cow, each of which act as an additional signature of the artist on the artwork. Linocut in black and red on Permalife white wove paper 4.5 x 6 inches, image 11.5 x 8.75 inches, sheet 16.5 x 13.63 inches, frame Signed in pencil, below image, lower right. Edition 1/100 in pencil, below image, lower left. Chinese signature stamp in red, below image, lower right. Remaque of a cow in red, below image, lower right. Permalife watermark to paper. Framed to conservation standards in a shadow-box style mounting, using 100 percent rag matting, museum glass, and housed in a silver-finish wood moulding. Overall excellent condition with no creases or discoloration. Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner was well known for his whimsical cows and ballerinas and abstract imagery. He and his late wife Ruth Grotenrath, both well-known Wisconsin artists, began their prolific careers as muralists for WPA projects, primarily post offices. Lichtner also painted murals for industry and private clients. Schomer was a printmaker and produced block prints, lithographs, and serigraph prints. His casein (paint made from dairy products) and acrylic paintings are of the rural Wisconsin landscape and farm animals. He became interested in cows when he and Ruth spent summers near Holy Hill in Washington County. According to David Gordon, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Schomer Lichtner had a tremendous joie de vivre and expressed it in his art. Schomer Lichtner was nationally known for his whimsical paintings and sculptures of black- and white-patterned Holstein cows...

"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...

"Don't Wine" is a mixed media piece, predominately a serigraph, by Paula Schuette Kramer and Bill Weege. Both artists signed in pencil in the lower right, and the title is in the lower left. It is one of a an edition of 50. The print is an explosion of bright colors, but red, blue, and green dominated the composition as they fade through the background. A blue figure climbs up a ladder out of an apple, hefting a large wine bottle overhead, which they pour out into the sea of wine. A man, woman, and long-necked orange bird also look out from the apple, reading for the stem of a floating bunch of green grapes. A group surrounds the grapes with their heads and shoulders above the water, eating the fruit. Birds fly through the background, dodging wine glasses and a vase of flowers that seem to be tumbling from a flying carpet. The entire image feels very surreal. Art size: 12" x 10" Frame size: 19 1/4" x 17" Paula Schuette Kraemer is an independent artist living in Madison, Wisconsin...

This poster, published in 1971 for the Fondation Maeght, proudly boasts a lithographic rendering of Wassily Kandinsky's 1922 mural plans for the Juryfreie exhibition in Germany. It w...

The present color collagraph, from the portfolio 'Los Animales,' is an excellent example of Joseph Rozman's pictographic style. Rozman's work often looks to ancient and non-western a...

"Pyramid Between Two Dry Lakes" is an original etching and aquatint by James Rosenquist. The artist signed the piece lower right and wrote the title and edition number (56/78) in the...

Untitled, for "XXe Siècle (20th C.)" magazine is an original color lithograph by Latin American artist Wifredo Lam. It depicts a variety of surreal and abstract lines and figures in ...