'Counterpoint' — Mid-Century Modernist Abstraction
By Edward August Landon
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Edward Landon, 'Counterpoint', color serigraph, 1942, edition 25, Ryan 45. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Edition 25' in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream, wove paper; the full sheet with margins (7/8 to 2 1/2 inches). A 1 1/2 inch crease across the top left sheet corner, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 13 9/16 x 14 5/16 inches (344 x 364 mm); sheet size 14 15/16 x 17 inches (379 x 432 mm). Literature: – 'A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking', David Acton, New York, London, 1990. – 'American Screenprints', Reba and Dave Williams, New York, 1987. – 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', Stephen Coppel, The British Museum, 2008. Impressions of this work are held in the following museum collections: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum. ABOUT THE ARTIST Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Edward Landon dropped out of high school to study art at the Hartford Art School. In 1930 and 1931 he was a student of Jean Charlot at the Art Students League in New York, after which he traveled to Mexico to study privately for a year with Carlos Merida. In 1933 he settled near Springfield, Massachusetts, painted murals in the local trade school, and exhibited with the Springfield Art League. His painting 'Memorial Day' won first prize at the fifteenth annual exhibition of the League at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. Landon became an active member of the Artists Union of Western Massachusetts, serving as president from 1934-1938. Landon acquired Anthony Velonis’s instructional pamphlet on the technique of serigraphy in the late 1930s. With colleagues Phillip Hicken, Donald Reichert, and Pauline Stiriss, he began experimenting with screen printing techniques. The artists' groundbreaking work in screen printing as a fine art medium was the subject of the group’s landmark exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts in 1940. Landon became one of the founding members of the National Serigraph Society and served as editor of its publication, 'Serigraph Quarterly,' in the late 1940s and as its president in 1952 and 1953. The Norlyst Gallery in Manhattan held a one-person show of his prints in 1945. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1950, Landon traveled to Norway, where he researched the history of local artistic traditions and produced the book 'Scandinavian Design: Picture and Rune Stones...
Mid-20th Century American Modern Abstract Prints
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