Marie Roberts

C F S I, Signed Lithograph, Coney Island, Comic Character Figures

1995

OPERATION MOSES is an original hand drawn lithograph by the American artist/sculptor Chaim Gross, hand proofed and printed from lithographic plates on archival Arches paper, 100% acid free. OPERATION MOSES is a contemporary style figurative watercolor drawing created to commemorate the evacuation of African Jews to Israel here represented by visual elements including colorful doves, a yellow menorah, an out stretched hand, city of Jerusalem, the U S White House, stone tablets, and a group of seated Ethiopian people studying Torah. OPERATION MOSES was printed in watercolor shades of light blues, reds, yellow, green, salmon pink, purple, browns and graphite black for the pencil drawing using the age-old hand printing methods first used in fine art lithography printmaking. OPERATION MOSES is a very unique, extremely limited edition lithograph created in commemoration of the historic airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984. Operation Moses refers to the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews (known as the "Beta Israel" community or "Falashas") from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine in 1984. Print size - 16 x 20 inches, unframed, excellent condition, pencil signed by Chaim Gross Image size - 10.5 x 15 1/8 inches Edition size - 10, plus proofs Printer - J K Fine Art Editions Co. NY Never been framed or mounted, pencil signed A.P.(Artist Proof) aside from an edition of 10, printers chop on lower left corner, from the master printers private collection Chaim Gross,(1904 - 1991) was a sculptor, artist, and teacher, known for his wood carvings, sculptures of moving human figures, religious imagery, acrobats, mothers and children. Chaim was born on March 17, 1904 to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia. During World War I, Russian forces invaded Austria-Hungary; amidst the turmoil, the Grosses fled Kolomyia. They returned when Austria retook the town in 1915, refugees of the war. When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest, where Gross attended the city's art academy and studied with painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna shortly before emigrating to New York City in 1921. In the U.S., Gross's studies continued at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied sculpture with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League, with sculptor Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School, studying under Abbo Ostrowsky. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Gross exhibited at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries and, beginning in 1928, at the Whitney Studio Club (the precursor to the Whitney Museum of American Art). In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. Also in 1932, Gross married Renee Nechin (1909-2005), and they had two children, Yehuda and Mimi (Mimi Gross is a New York-based artist, and was married to the artist Red Grooms from 1963-1976). In 1933, Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures for schools and public colleges, and created works for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the 1937 Exposition universelle in Paris. Chaim Gross, Sculptor by Josef Vincent Lombardo, the first major book on Gross, came out in 1949 and included a catalogue raisonne of his sculpture. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1963, Gross and his family moved from their longtime residence at 30 W. 105th Street to Greenwich Village, following the purchase of a four-story historic townhouse at 526 LaGuardia Place, which is now the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. In 1974, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held the exhibition, Chaim Gross: Sculpture and Drawings, and in 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African...

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