Wisconsin - Abstract Prints

"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...

Part of the artist's 'Self-Portrait Series,' David Barnett’s ‘Take My Hand, I’m a Stranger in Paradise’ deconstructs self-portrait photography by only displaying the artist's shadow ...

'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 ...

"Man With Horses" is a signed relief print in red and black on rag paper. It is signed lower right and from an edition of 120. 28 1/4" x 18 3/8" image...

"Incoming Tide" is an original woodblock print by Hiroki Morinoue. it is signed and dated in the lower right, titled lower center, and editioned (48/120) in the lower left. This prin...

"Musee National d'Art Moderne" is a po ster by Victor Brauner for an exhibition of his work in Paris. It features abstracted heads in yellow, orange, and blue, with a border in pastel pink, green, blue, and yellow. It is framed with gold moulding. 33 1/2" x 19 5/8" art 40 1/2" x 26" frame Victor Brauner was born in Piatra Neamt, in 1903, and died in Paris, in 1966. He was the son of a timber manufacturer from Piatra Neamt who settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended the elementary school. When his family returned to the country (1914), he continued his studies at the evangelical school in Braila; he began to be interested in zoology in that period. He attended the Art School in Bucharest (1919-1921) and H. Igiroseanu’s private school of painting. He visited Falticeni and Balcic and started painting landscapes à la Cézanne. Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages: "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist". On September 26, 1924, the Mozart Galleries in Bucharest hosted his first personal exhibition. In that period he met poet Ilarie Voronca, together with whom he founded the "15HP" magazine. It was in this magazine that Brauner published the manifesto "The pictopoetry" and the article "The surrationalism". He painted and exhibited "Christ at the Cabaret" (in the manner of Graosz) and "The Girl in the Factory" (in the manner of Holder). He participated to the "Contemporanul" exhibition (November 1924). In 1925 he undertook his first journey to Paris, from where he returned in 1927. In the period 1928-1931 he was a contributor of the "Unu" magazine (an avant-garde periodical of Dadaist and Surrealist conceptions), which published reproductions of most of his paintings and graphic works: "clear drawings and portraits made by Victor Brauner to his friends, poets and writers" (Jaques Lessaigne - "Painters I Knew"). In 1930 he settled in Paris, where he met Brancusi, who initiated him into the photographic art. In that same period he became a friend of the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane and met Yves Tanguil, who would later introduce him to the circle of the Surrealists. He lived on Moulin Vert St., in the same building as Giacometti and Tanguil. He painted "Self-portrait with a plucked eye", a premonitory theme. In 1933, Andre Breton opened Brauner’s first personal exhibition in Paris, at the Pierre Gallery. The theme of the eye was omnipresent: "Mr. K’s power of concentration" and "The strange case of Mr. K" are paintings that Andre Breton compared with Alfred de Jarry’s play "Ubu Roi", "a huge, caricature-like satire of the bourgeoisie". In 1935 he returned to Bucharest. He joined the ranks of the Communist Party for a short while, without a very firm conviction. On April 7, 1935, he opened a new personal exhibition at the Mozart Galleries. Sasa Pana wrote about it in his autobiographical novel "Born in 02": "April 7, 1935… An exhibition surrealist in character. The catalogue shows 16 paintings; they are accompanied by verses, surrealist images that are exquisite by their bizarreness - they are perhaps the creations of automatic dictation and they certainly bear no connection to the painting itself. They are written in French, but their colorful taste remains in the Romanian translation too. The exhibition brought about many interesting articles and takings of position regarding Surrealism in arts and literature." Another remark about Brauner’s participation to Surrealist exhibitions: "Despite its appearance of abstract formula,… this trend is a point a transition to the art that is to come." (R. Trost, in the"Rampa" of April 14, 1935) In the "Cuvantul liber" of April 20, 1935, Miron Paraschivescu wrote in the article "Victor Brauner’s exhibition": "In contrast to what one may see, for instance, in the neighboring exhibition halls, Victor Brauner’s painting means integration, an attitude that is a social one, as far as art allows it. For V. Brauner takes attitude through the very character and ideology of his art." On April 27, he created the illustrations for Gelu Naum’s poetry collection - "The Incendiary Traveler" and "The Freedom to Sleep on the Forehead". In 1938 he returned to France. On August 28 he lost his left eye in a violent argument between Dominguez and Esteban Frances. Brauner attempted to protect Esteban and was hit by a glass thrown by Dominguez: the premonition became true. That same year, he met Jaqueline Abraham, who was to become his wife. He created a series of paintings called "lycanthropic" or sometimes "chimeras". He left Paris in 1940, together with Pierre Malbille. He lived for a while in Perpignan, at Robert Rius’, then at Cant-Blage (Eastern Pyrenees) and at Saint Feliu d’Amont, where he was forcibly secluded. However, he kept in touch with the Surrealists that had taken refuge in Marseille. In 1941, he was granted the permission to settle in Marseille. Seriously ill, he was hospitalized at the "Paradis" clinic. He painted "Prelude to a civilization" (now in the Gelman collection). After the war, he took part to the Venice biannual exhibition; he traveled to Italy. In 1959, he settled in the workshop on Lepic St. In 1961 he traveled to Italy again. He settled in Varengeville, where he spent most of his time working. In 1965 he created an ensemble of object-paintings full of inventiveness and vivacity, grouped under the titles "Mythologie" and "Fêtes des mères...

"Chicago International Art Exhibition" is a color poster by Ed Ruscha, signed and dated lower right. The artists initials are also in the lower right of...

'Mad Dash' is a print that exemplifies the work of Joseph Rozman during the 1970s, moving beyond the playful pictographs of the previous decade and morphing into an increasingly surr...

"Les Erophages" is an etching and aquatint with gold ink on Japanese paper signed by Andre Masson. Coming from the corner on the lower left was a boarder of pink with lines and circl...

"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...

Joan Miró produced this original lithograph especially for the catalogue for an exhibition of his and Josep Llorens Artigas' collaborative work at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New Yo...

"Galerie Maeght - 5 Livres Graves" is an original lithograph poster by Eduardo Chillida. The poster features one of Chillida's signature abstract designs as well as some information ...

"Original Lithograph III" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs III, Maeght Publisher" in 1977. It depicts M...

‘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...

"Composition" is an abstract lithograph in purple, red, and yellow by Paul Jenkins. 10" x 7 1/2" art 20 1/2" x 18" framed Paul Jenkins was a monumental figure of American Abstract...

"Galerie Maeght" lithograph poster by Jean Rene Bazaine. This poster holds Bazine's name in harsh orange lines near the top of the piece. Diagonally bisecting the b and a in Bazaine is a teal line. Bellow this horizontally against the white backgrounds are two lines, one painted yellow and the other blue. Image: 29 x 21 in Jean Bazaine was a French painter, designer of stained glass windows, and writer. He was the great great grandson of the English Court portraitist Sir George Hayter. In 1949/1950 he had his first major one man show at the Galerie Maeght, who remained his art dealer thenceforth. From then on it was a steady progress of major exhibitions: Bern, Hanover, Zürich, Oslo... 1987 a retrospective exhibition in Galerie Maeght, 1988 a retrospective of his drawings in the Musée Matisse and finally in 1990 the Exposition Bazaine in the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris., which was accompanied by the reissue of his major texts on painting in art theory as Le temps de la peinture (Paris, Aubier 1990). "The motley crowds of international tourists and souvenir-shoppers who fill the ancient streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris spend most of their time admiring the open-air displays of seafood outside the Greek restaurants in the rue de la Huchette. They ignore the beautiful church of St Severin in the same street, for have they not already "done" Notre Dame? So they miss one of the most wonderful series of stained-glass windows in France: Jean Bazaine's vivid, dynamic works irradiating the sombre ambulatory and apsidal chapels. These windows represent the seven sacraments of the Church, portrayed as essential forms from nature in all its glory and symbolising Water, Fire and Light, sacred emblems of Divine Grace. An appropriate biblical verse is inscribed beneath each. Only Pierre Soulages with his "luminous black" windows at l'Abbaye de Conques (1998) can stand comparison with the majesty of these contemporary works by Bazaine, created between 1965 and 1970. Bazaine was fortunate in his friends. He received at an early stage in his student career support and advice from another master colourist, Pierre Bonnard. In his youth he knew Leger, Braque, James Joyce and Marcel Proust. One of his great personal friends was Jean Fautrier, with whom he shared his first exhibition in 1930. His work gradually developed as a form of bold tachisme - brilliantly composed but well-controlled "splashes" of sumptuous colour. He rejected the term "abstract" which he considered a denial of the essentially intimate relationships between art and reality. He quoted his friend Braque: "The canvas must efface the idea behind it." In 1941, during the Nazi occupation, at a time when Hitler was destroying many works of modern art, Bazaine had the courage to organise in Paris a first "avant-garde" exhibition of 20 French artists. In 1948, he wrote his first book, an unpedantic, unacademic view of contemporary painting, Notes sur la peinture d'aujourd'hui. He quotes Braque on Cezanne: "He's a painters' painter - other people think it's unfinished." Bazaine, too, reverenced Cezanne: Three lines drawn by Cezanne overturn our whole concept of the world, proclaim the liberty of man, his courage. The great painters have never had any other aims. The painter says: "I exist, therefore you exist. I am free, therefore you are free. Or at least he tries to. It's his one aim in life." After the Second World War, Bazaine produced vast compositions with virtuoso colour structures, mostly with references to nature, like the breathtaking Vent de mer (1949, now in the Museum of Modern Art, Paris) and Orage au jardin (1952, now in the Van Abbemuseum at Eindhoven). His Earth and Sky (1950) is in the Maeght Foundation at Saint Paul de Vence. One of his greatest works, L'Arbre tenebreux (1962), was sold to the Sonja Henie...

"Shell" is an original etching by Arthur Luiz Piza. It depicts an abstract, textured shell in the shape of an egg. The artist signed the piece lower right and wrote the edition numbe...

"Lithographie Originale V" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs IV, Maeght Publisher" in 1981. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract...

"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...

Part of the artist's 'Self-Portrait Series,' David Barnett’s ‘Take My Hand, I’m a Stranger in Paradise’ deconstructs self-portrait photography by only displaying the artist's shadow ...

Designed by Shusaku Arakawa, this was a poster for his exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, 1977. Shusaku Arakawa was a Japanese artist and architect. Shusaku Arakawa, who spoke of himself as an “eternal outsider” and “abstractionist of the distant future,” first studied mathematics and medicine at the University of Tokyo, and art at the Musashino Art University. He was a member of Tokyo’s Neo-Dadaism Organizers, a precursor to The Neo-Dada movement. Arakawa’s early works were first displayed in the infamous Yomiuri Independent Exhibition, a watershed event for postwar Japanese avant-garde art. Arakawa arrived in New York in 1961 with fourteen dollars in his pocket and a telephone number for Marcel Duchamp, whom he phoned from the airport and with whom he eventually formed a close friendship. He started using diagrams within his paintings as philosophical propositions. Jean-Francois Lyotard said of Arakawa’s work that it “makes us think through the eyes,” and Hans-Georg Gadamer described it as transforming “the usual constancies of orientation into a strange, enticing game—a game of continually thinking out.” Quoting Paul Celan, Gadamer also wrote of the work: "There are songs to sing beyond the human." Charles Bernstein and Susan Bee observe, "Arakawa deals with the visual field as discourse, modal systems that constitute the world rather than being constituted by it." Arthur Danto found Arakawa to be “the most philosophical of contemporary artists." For his part, Arakawa declared: “Painting is only an exercise, never more than that.” Beginning in 1963, he collaborated with fellow artist, architect and poet Madeline Gins...

"Lithographie Originale IV" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs IV, Maeght Publisher" in 1981. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstrac...

"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...

"Emparatza" is an original etching by Eduardo Chillida. This abstract etching depicts minimal black shapes on a distressed white and gray background. The artist signed the piece. 8...

"Animal Farm" is an original color collagraph by Joseph Rozman. This artwork, edition number 9/10, is from the artist's "Los Animales" portfolio. The artist signed, titled, dated, an...

‘Early American Pop’ is a giclée print on watercolor paper after the 1966 original, signed by the artist in the lower right. Reminiscent of patterns from stamp art and quilt art, ‘Ea...

'Winter Silhouettes,' a small and delicate print, is an original offset lithograph by the Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner. The composition displays registers of foliage, emerging from the white of the paper as though emerging from the snow-covered ground. The artwork is thus plays with the materials of printmaking; the paper is both the support and the primary indication of the season. The subtle texture of the tooth of the paper also adds life to the image, giving the snow a wind-swept, creature trodden surface. The free forms of the grasses and leaves resemble the lyrical mid-century works of the French artist Henri Matisse, which combined with these material concerns demonstrate Lichter's modern sensibilities. 3.75 x 2.75 inches, image 5.5 x 4.5 inches, paper 10 x 8 inches frame Signed and dated in the stone, lower right Framed to conservation standards in a shadow-box style mounting, using 100 percent rag matting, museum glass, and housed in a cherry wood moulding Overall excellent condition; some toning to edges of paper; some minor abrasions to frame 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 and elegant ballerina dancers. Lichtner also painted all sorts of combinations of beautiful women, flowers and country landscapes. James Auer, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic, said that his art eventually "exploded into expressionistic design elements with bold, flat areas of color and high energy that anticipated Pop Art." Auer went on to describe Lichtner’s work as full of "wit, vigor and virtuosity." As early as 1930, Lichtner’s work was shown at the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition in New York and at museums throughout the Midwest. As a student, he was a protégé of another icon of 20th century American art, Gustave Moeller. Lichtner and his wife, Ruth Grotenrath (1912-1988), are celebrated as Milwaukee’s first couple of painting and are regarded as major Wisconsin artists. Lichtner’s impressive production, perseverance, longevity, and positive approach to his life and art made him and his work distinctive and much loved by his many admirers. His work is currently represented in collections at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the West Bend Museum, and in the collections of many individuals. Books on the lives and art work of both Lichtner and Grotenrath are in progress and it is anticipated that they will be published next year. Schomer Lichtner passed away on May 9, 2006 at the age of 101. He continued to amaze and create with his whimsical paintings of ballerinas...

Originally drawn in 1964 while Barnett was still in high school, ‘Human Geography’ depicts an anthropomorphic figure assembled from the continents. Featuring the simultaneous points ...

‘Ten Commandments’ is a giclée print on watercolor paper, signed by the artist in the lower right. In the composition, Barnett presents a still life of Jewish ritual objects, includi...

A multicolored abstract lithograph by American artist James Rosenquist. This is number 36 from the edition of 100. Signed and dated lower right. Numbered and titled lower left. 37" ...

"Light on Water" is an original 13 color lithograph with pochoir from 4 aluminum plates and 1 mylar stencil. It was created by the artist Emmi Whitehors...

Part of the artist’s ‘Firework Series,’ ‘Grand Finale I’ is a giclée print after the 1997 original, signed by the artist in the lower left. Pointillistic fireworks bloom over the Sta...

"Derriere Le Miroir" is an original portfolio of lithographs and text by Alexander Calder. The artist signed the portfolio on the last page. This is edition number 146/150 of the del...

"Mi Gato" is an original collagraph by Joseph Rozman. The artist signed, dated, and titled the artwork below the image. This artwork is the artist's proof. This artwork features an a...

"Red Dragon" is an original color collograph by Wisconsin artist Joseph Rozman and part of his "Los Animales" portfolio. The edition, title, signature, and date are written beneath t...

"Mother's Rainbow, A.P." is an original etching and embossing by Joesph Rozman. The artist signed, titled, and dated the artwork below the image. This is an artist's proof. The artwo...

"Terres de Grande Feu" is an original color lithograph poster by Joan Miró for Galerie Maeght Paris. Poster produced for the exhibition of 43 ceramic pieces,...

"Dahlke-Rozman, Exhibition Poster" is an original color lithograph by Joseph Rozman. Rozman signed the work on the lower right side. This artwork advertises an exhibition of works by...

"Red Devil" is an original color collagraph from the "Los Animales" portfolio by Joseph Rozman. The artist signed, dated, titled, and editioned the artwork below the image. It is num...

'Winter Silhouettes,' a small and delicate print, is an original offset lithograph by the Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner. The composition displays registers of foliage, emerging from the white of the paper as though emerging from the snow-covered ground. The artwork is thus plays with the materials of printmaking; the paper is both the support and the primary indication of the season. The subtle texture of the tooth of the paper also adds life to the image, giving the snow a wind-swept, creature trodden surface. The free forms of the grasses and leaves resemble the lyrical mid-century works of the French artist Henri Matisse, which combined with these material concerns demonstrate Lichter's modern sensibilities. 3.75 x 2.75 inches, image 5.5 x 4.5 inches, paper 9.25 x 7.75 inches frame Signed and dated in the stone, lower right Framed to conservation standards using 100 percent rag matting, museum glass, and housed in a modern silver moulding 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 and elegant ballerina dancers. Lichtner also painted all sorts of combinations of beautiful women, flowers and country landscapes. James Auer, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic, said that his art eventually "exploded into expressionistic design elements with bold, flat areas of color and high energy that anticipated Pop Art." Auer went on to describe Lichtner’s work as full of "wit, vigor and virtuosity." As early as 1930, Lichtner’s work was shown at the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition in New York and at museums throughout the Midwest. As a student, he was a protégé of another icon of 20th century American art, Gustave Moeller. Lichtner and his wife, Ruth Grotenrath (1912-1988), are celebrated as Milwaukee’s first couple of painting and are regarded as major Wisconsin artists. Lichtner’s impressive production, perseverance, longevity, and positive approach to his life and art made him and his work distinctive and much loved by his many admirers. His work is currently represented in collections at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the West Bend Museum, and in the collections of many individuals. Books on the lives and art work of both Lichtner and Grotenrath are in progress and it is anticipated that they will be published next year. Schomer Lichtner passed away on May 9, 2006 at the age of 101. He continued to amaze and create with his whimsical paintings of ballerinas and cows. The late James Auer, art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel referred to Lichtner as the artist laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the official artist of the Milwaukee Ballet...

"Lithographie Originale I" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs IV, Maeght Publisher" in 1981. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract...

"Morph Dog Series: Morph Dog Fireworks Bouquet Vertical Variation" a giclée print of an original watercolor painting by David Barnett. The print is signed in the lower right by the a...

"Black Triangle" is an original black etching by Pop artist James Rosenquist. The artist signed the piece lower right, wrote the title and edition number (72/78) lower left, and "2nd State" lower center. This piece is part of Rosenquist's "Tripartite" series, where he divides the composition into three juxtaposed images. This piece features a rocking chair and rocking horse, an irregular circle with a flower within, and a folded American flag...

"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 colorful poster was produced for a 1981 exhibition at the Lincoln Center for the Arts in Milwaukee, celebrating glass art. The image is dominated by the exhibition title 'GLASS ...

"Head of Woman" is an original woodcut on yellow paper by David Barnett. The artist signed the piece in the lower right, and wrote the title lower center, and the edition number (1/6...

"Wee Fun" is Joseph Rozman's second artist's proof of a relief etching. The piece is in black and white and depicts many intricate interactions between figures, animals, and objects....

"Title Page" and "Art Nouveau Motif" are two sides of one double-sided original lithograph by Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha. These illustrations were from "Ilsee, Princess of Tri...

"Head with Cows and Dancers" is a black and white serigraph by Schomer Lichtner. It is signed lower right and is edition 9/100. 15 3/4" x 20 3/4" art 23 1/2" x 29 1/4" framed Schom...

"Hinting (With Chine Colle)" is an etching and an aquatint signed by Molly McKee. This complex print starts with a mass of black scribbles that are in the foreground near the upper left. The next piece is a woman's torso. Covered up slightly by the black marks, but still beautiful and graceful. Behind her is a golden rocket shaped object. Art: 12 x 8.88 in Frame: 24.88 x 17.5 in A Milwaukee...

"Dream Weavers" and "Soul of the Land" are two sides of a double-sided lithograph by Alphonse Mucha. These illustrations were created for "Ilsee, Princess of Tripoli" and are the rare proofs before the text. These artworks were for pages 31 and 32. 8" x 6 1/4" art 19 1/4" x 17 1/8" frame Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in the small town of Ivancice, Monrovia. Though it is rumored that Mucha was drawing before he was walking, his early years were spent as a choirboy and amateur musician. It wasn’t until after he finished high school that he came to realize that living people were responsible for the art that he admired in the local churches. That epiphany made him determined to become a painter. He was soon sent off to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julian. On January 1, 1985, he presented his own new style to the citizens of Paris. Spurning the bright colors and the more square-like shape of the more popular poster artists, the design was a sensation. Art Nouveau can...

"Trompe L'Oeil is an original color lithograph by Saul Steinberg. The artist signed the piece in the lower right and wrote the edition number (6/50) in the lower left. This piece sho...

"Original Lithograph VI" 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...

"Original Lithograph V" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs III, Maeght Publisher" in 1977. It depicts Mir...

Second state in yellow etching of bright abstract stars, by American post-war pop artist James Rosenquist. Signed and dated lower right Titled and edition number 33/78 lower left 17...

"Abstract" is a color lithograph by Gerard Titus-Carmel. It features a mix of biomorphic and geometric/structural shapes in sepia tones. 8 1/4" x 9 1/2" art 16 7/8" x 18" frame Gé...

"Musee de L'Athenee" is an original color lithograph poster by Joan Miro. It is from an edition of 1000. It showcases Miro's surreal biomorphic marks and is an advertising poster for...

"Poly-Quad-Pod" is an original color collagraph signed, titled, and numbered in the lower part of the print. This piece is edition 9/10 and is by the artist Joseph Rozman. It depicts...