Metka Krašovec

Upside down

1969

Artist: Alexander Calder Title: Derriere le Miroir #221 Portfolio: Derriere le Miroir #221 Medium: Lithograph in colors Date: 1975 Edition: Unnumbered Sheet Size: 15" x 22" Image Siz...

"Stabile with Red Sun Galerie Maught" is a color lithograph poster. The Stabile is a black topsy-turvy statue taking up most of the piece. A red sun sits to the right of the black st...

"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...

Delicate Abstract Lithograph with Blue and Orange by American Beat artist Will Peterson (1928-1994.) This lithograph blends the linework and movement of abstract impressionism with a color field-esque composition. The vibrant orange rectangle in the center of the piece is bracketed by a contrasting cobalt border. The edges of these shapes are softened by delicate linework and areas of hazy lighter blues and whites. Overall, this creates an atmospheric and striking piece. Lithograph is printed on wove paper which is fixed to a larger piece of handmade paper containing the artists signature and a small embossing found on his other pieces from this time period. This paper is displayed on top of a linen covered board with sturdy wood edges and a plexiglass over over the entire piece. Will Peterson was born in Chicago in 1928 to German immigrant parents. He contracted Polio when he was in High School and thus spent much of his early years ill. During this time he started working as a cartoonist for his high school’s paper. He started his official art studies at Wilber Wright College in Chicago and later earned a BA and a MA at Michigan State University. Here he studied print making and lithography under John S. deMartelly. He began enjoying artistic success while still in graduate school, exhibiting at the Detroit Art Institute, the Terry Art Institute, the National Print Exhibition, and the Boston Printmakers. Peterson was drafted into the army in 1952 and thus spent time in Korea and Japan. His time as an educational specialist in Hokkaido was a formative experience for him and his interest in Japanese calligraphy and other arts influenced his later work. Upon returning to the United States, he moved to Oakland, California. He became involved with the beat movement and after founding the Bay Printmakers Society with fellow artist Mel Strawn...