I-S LXXa (Homage to the Square) by Josef Albers, 1970

I-S LXXb (Homage to the Square), 1970; Serigraph on German etching paper; Titled and numbered 56/125 in pencil lower left; Signed and dated '70 in pencil lower right; Published by Ives-Sillman, Inc., New Haven; Blind stamped with publisher's mark lower right; Image size - 21 x 21", Frame 21 1/4 x 21 1/4"; Framed using a silver metal frame and UV conservation clear glass.

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"Every perception of color is an illusion, we do not see colors as they really are. In our perception they alter on another." - Joseph Albers

  

Josef Albers (1888-1976) was a German born artist and educator and the first living artist to be given a solo show at both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY. He taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and was the head of the Yale University's Department of Design. Josef Albers was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and was primarily recognized for with exploration of color.

In 1949, Josef Albers wrote the definitive text on color theory, "Interaction of Color," and soon began work on a series of colored squares and rectangles that was to dominate his work. The series which would be called "Homage to the Square" explored the idea of color as an illusion and dependent upon context. "We do not see colours as they really are, in our perception they alter one another," he wrote. Although he began his color experiments with paint, he was to move onto the flat printing process, particularly the screen-print. The technique was perfectly suited for his needs because of the consistent application of the color, as well as the ease of use and speed in which combinations could be achieved.

I-S LXXb (Homage to the Square), 1970 is from a series of prints that were published by by Ives-Sillman, Inc., New Haven. The prints were designated 'I-S" to represent Ives Sillman and were part of an open-ended series that were lettered 'a', 'b', 'c', etc. Both of the I-S LXXa and I-S LXXb were published on the occasion of Albers 80th birthday and were the first pairs of prints which were created to commemorate his birthday from 1970-1973. The others were LXXIa and b, LXXIIa and b, and LXXIIIa and b.

I-S LXXb (Homage to the Square), 1970 is an excellent example of Josef Albers at his best! The work is composed of three concentric off set squares in varying light values of yellow, all set on the white ground of a sheet of German etching paper. I perfect example of Josef Albers at his best, and a wonderful addition to any modern art collection.

 

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La Primavera (Spring), 1988 by Sam Francis

 

La Primavera (Spring), 1988; Etching and aquatint in colors on Fabriano paper; signed in pencil and numbered VII/X; Blindstamps of the publisher/printer, 2RC Edizioni d'Arte/Vigna Antoniniana Stamperia d'Arte, Rome; Size - 46 x 95", Frame 57 x 106"; Catalog Raisonne: Lembark I.98, SFE-070RC;  Framed with a white high gloss wood frame, linen liner and UV plexiglass.

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"I prefer to think of colours in relationships to each other, rather than just one colour at a time." - Sam Francis

Sam Francis (1923-1994) was an American painter and printmaker, most known for his large scale works indicative of abstract expressionism action painting. Francis took up painting in 1944 as a result of a spinal injury that he incurred during the Second World War. He gave up his studies of Botany, Medicine and Psychology and instead went to study art at the University of California, Berkley where he earned a BA and MA. He would then travel and paint for years in Paris, south of France, Tokyo, Mexico City, Bern, and New York. Francis's work, although referencing abstract expressionism, is very much associated with his California environment as related to space, color, and light. He developed a style that involved the use of multifaceted brushwork, often dominated by cell-like dripping forms.

 

His work hangs in the world's greatest museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Norton Simon Museum, The Kunstmuseum, Idemitsu Museum of Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Centre Pompidou-Musee National d'Art Moderne. 

 

In the 1980's Sam Francis partnered with Valter and Eleonora Rossi of the Italian print workshop 2RC. The Rossis had just moved to New York City and wanted to continue their work printing very large scale intaglio prints. An intaglio print is made on a copper plate and utilizes aquatint that involves the application of a fine layer of resin dust that is evenly applied to the surface of the plate. It is then heated so that each particle crystallizes and is firmly adhered. Francis would then paint, with a sugar lift solution, the plate. The finished image was dipped into an acid bath and areas where the plate was exposed, ie not painted, was bitten by the acid. The resulting etched patterns could now hold ink and members of the printing company, working very quickly so that the ink would not dry, would work ink into the large plate. The entire plate was then covered with a sheet of dampened paper and run through the press under pressure in order to pull an impression. For the Francis prints, the final image is composed of overprinting of four different plates, printed in ten color and run through the press four times. The result is an extraordinary technical achievement and resulted in the suite of four large scale prints collectively titled "The Five Seasons." Each of the four prints was composed from the same set of plates, but inked in different color combinations. The four prints in the suite are: La Primavera, La Primavera Fredda, La Notte, and Pioggia d'Oro.

"La Primavera (Spring)," 1988 is an example of Sam Francis at the height of his prowess. The framed work is an impressive 57 x 106 inches and is one of the largest intaglio prints ever realized. The structure is a loose latticework of light green cells which overlays a cacophony of splatters and drips of paint whose colors reference the emergence of plants and flowers in a garden. An absolutely stunning work that would be the highlight for any modern art collection!

 

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Joseph (From Men in the Cities), 2000 by Robert Longo

Joseph (From Men in the Cities), 2000; Lithograph on Arches Cover Paper; Signed and dated in pencil lower right, Numbered 36/50 in pencil lower left; Published by Wolfryd-Selway Fine Art, West Hollywood; Size - Sheet 70 x 40", Frame 75 3/4 x 45 3/4"; Framed floated on white linen with a black wood exterior frame and plexiglass.

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"If you're fortunate enough with your history, like withe Men in the Cities, your work becomes so absorbed in culture that the authorship of it doesn't exist anymore." - Robert Longo

Robert Longo (b. 1953) is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer, and musician. He is most known for his large-scale, hyper-realistic charcoal portraits that reference power, authority, and social unrest. In the early 1980's he earned acclaim for his “Men in the Cities” series, which feature business attire subjects posed in uncanny contortions. Since then, he has depicted scenes from the Occupy Wall Street movement, the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, Black Lives Matter protests, and refugee migrations. A member of the loose cohort of Pictures Generation artists, who repurpose mass media images in their artwork, Longo draws inspiration from photographs and art historical reference material. He often uses a black and white or a monochromatic palette, carefully building his charcoal surfaces to create a sense of depth and contrast. He has exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and his work hangs in the world's greatest art museums. 

 

 Close up of the signature and date.

Robert Longo's "Men in the Cities" series is composed of writhing dancing figures in space. For the series, Longo photographed his friends lurching backward, collapsing forward, or sprawled on an invisible pavement. After enlarging the pictures using a projector, Longo and his assistant drew them in sizes ranging from three-quarter scale to larger than life-size. In the process, the poses were often dramatized and their attire was converted into a black-and-white business formal. The idea for this work came, in 1975, from a still image in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film The American Soldier. According to art critic Los Angeles Times writer William Wilson, the pictures recall nothing so much as the final scene in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. About four years passed before Longo turned the vision of a man shot in the back into a monumental series of drawings. 

Close up of the edition number.

 

 Framed Joseph (From Men in the Cities), 2000 by Robert Longo

"Joseph" is a large scale work by Robert Longo, with the sheet size being a huge seventy inches tall. The image shows a young man whose left leg has given way, as his knee buckles causing his left foot to lift and twist. Joseph's left shoulder is thrust back from his body, as is his left arm. His right shoulder and arm are in front of him and blocked by his body from the viewer. The movement is sudden and impactful, as exemplified by his black neck tie flailing in the air above him. Joseph's head is tilted back further conveying a very violent and unnatural human pose being caused by an unknown force. An absolutely stunning work by Robert Longo and a major addition to any art collection!

"You know. I think I hope I’m trying to tell the truth, and in that sense stylistically I’ve tried to avoid a style that is recognizable as a kind of like…that what Men in the Cities encapsulated. And I think that like, all these black and white drawings are basically reflective of the landscape of the world we live in. I think that my black and white drawings are… They exist somewhere between traditional representation and modernist abstraction—it’s almost like I translate photographs or something. I mean, we still see the world in photographs, in that sense. And I think black and white is actually highly abstract in that sense." - Robert Longo

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Los Alamitos, from Race Track Series, 1972 by Frank Stella

Los Alamitos, from Race Track Series, 1972; Screenprint on Gemini Rag Board; Numbered 12/75, signed Frank Stella and dated 72 in pencil lower right; Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, with their blindstamp and inkstamp verso; Catalog Raisonne: Axsom 74, Gemini 378; Size - Image 15 x 75 1/4", Sheet 20 1/4 x 80", Frame 20 1/2 x 80 1/2"; Framed floated with a silver metal exterior frame and plexiglass.

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"I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they... find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you get." - Frank Stella

Frank Stella (b. 1936) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, most known for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. In the late 1950's and 1960's he began to produce works which emphasized the picture-as-object, rather than the picture as a representation of the physical or emotional. The year 1959 saw the creation of the Black Paintings, a group of paintings composed of bands of black paint separated by very thin pinstripes of unpainted canvas. In 1961 he married Barbara Rose, who later be recognized as one of the most well known and respected art critics and who undoubtedly had a major influence on the artist. It was during this time that Stella continued to work within the idea that a picture was "a flat surface with paint on it, nothing more." 

 

 Close up of the edition number, signature, and date.

 

Stella generally works in series, in that the emerging works have a common theme, composition, and according to him; have the features of "line, plane, volume, and point within space." His famous quote regarding his work is, "what you see is what you see." Stella currently lives and works in New York City.

Frank Stella's race track series from 1972 consists of three horizontal prints, each named after a horse racing track in California or Mexico. Comparing horse racing to the art world he says, "Racing is so much nicer than the art world, where everything is driven by opinion. At the racetrack, it doesn't matter what people think. At the end of the race, one horse crosses the finish line first, and that horse is the best horse. It's a lot simpler." 

The concentric ellipse shaped color forms of the race track series resemble an simplified aerial view of race tracks. The first print in the series is "Del Mar," named after the racetrack in San Diego, CA. The light color values and hues are reminiscent of the the arid environment and coastal beach climate of the classic southern California way of life. "Los Alamitos," named after the racetrack in Orange County is a picture composed of shifts in color and light values. The oblong ellipses generate a pleasant and calming composition. The pale violet is surrounded by light values of blue and green and the black middle ellipse allows for the colors to pulse in a calming resonating vibrancy. The last in the series is "Agua Caliente," named for the dog racing track in Agua Caliente Casino and Resort in Mexico. The work is composed of only three ellipses and is the most bold of the grouping. An optical effect is created with a shade of green in the center surrounded by complimentary red color values. All three prints are large in size, being eighty inches long. It is this large format that allows for the works to be read as both important and to have their immediate presence further enhanced.

Close up of the Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles blindstamp and inkstamp verso.

"I feel that what keeps the push-pull from defeating the picture, what I think keeps it on the surface, is the feeling that the colors move, they follow the bands, they have a sense of direction. It's the directional sense of color, I think that holds the surface of the painting, I wanted something that was direct - right to your eye... something you didn't have to look around - you got the whole thing right away." - Frank Stella

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