Louise Bourgeois

Sheaves - Original Lithograph (Wye Smith #79-2)

1985

'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...

This artwork titled "Expandingr" 2001 is a original color lithograph on wove paper by American artist Betty Rees Heredia A.K.A Betty Snyder Shapiro,...

Leo Baeck and a Spirit is Characterized Sister Mary Corita Kent (American, 1918-1986) Signed Lower Right in Pencil Edition of 250 Lower center 21.5 x 21.5 inches 24 x 24 inches frame...

Thoreau "If a Man Does Not Keep Peace" Sister Mary Corita Kent (American, 1918-1986) Signed in Pencil Lower Right 22.5 x 22.5 inches 23.25 x 23.25 inches with frame Sister Mary Cori...

Study/Falling Man (Series II), 1967 By. Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927-2009) Signed in Pencil Lower Right Color Lithograph Unframed: 6 x 6 inches With Frame: 8.75 x 8.5 inches Kn...

Colossal Flashlight in Place of Hoover Dam, 1982 By Claes Oldenburg (Swedish, American, 1929-2022) Signed Lower Right Dated Middle Right Unframed: 23" x 22" Framed: 36.5" x 27.5" Whimsical sculpture of pop culture objects, many of them large and out-of-doors, is the signature work of Swedish-born Claes Oldenburg who became one of America's leading Pop Artists. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a diplomat, and during Claes' childhood moved his family from Stockholm to a variety of locations including Chicago where the father was general consul of Sweden and where Oldenburg spent most of his childhood. He attended the Latin School of Chicago, and then Yale University where he studied literature and art history, graduating in 1950, the same year Claes became an American citizen. Returning to Chicago, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1954 and also worked as a reporter at the City News Bureau. He opened his own studio, and in 1953, some of his satirical drawings were included in his first group show at the Club St. Elmo, Chicago. He also painted at the Oxbow School of Painting in Michigan. In 1956, he moved to New York where he drew and painted while working as a clerk in the art libraries of Cooper-Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. Selling his first artworks during this time, he earned 25 dollars for five pieces. Oldenburg became friends with numerous artists including Jim Dine, Red Grooms and Allan Kaprow, who with his "Happenings" was especially influential on Oldenburg's interest in environmental art. Another growing interest was soft sculpture, and in 1957, he created a piece later titled Sausage, a free-hanging woman's stocking stuffed with newspaper. In 1959, he had his first one-man show, held at the Judson Gallery at Washington Square. He exhibited wood and newspaper sculpture and painted papier-mache objects. Some viewers of the exhibit commented how refreshing Oldenburg's pieces were in contrast to the Abstract Expressionism, a style which much dominated the art world. During this time, he was influenced by the whimsical work of French artist, Bernard Buffet, and he experimented with materials and images of the junk-filled streets of New York. In 1960, Oldenburg created his first Pop-Art Environments and Happenings in a mock store full of plaster objects. He also did Performances with a cast of colleagues including artists Lucas Samaras, Tom Wesselman, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, dealer Annina Nosei, critic Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer. His first wife (1960-1970) Pat Muschinski, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his Happenings. This brash, often humorous, approach to art was at great odds with the prevailing sensibility that, by its nature, art dealt with "profound" expressions or ideas. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Lower East Side to house "The Store," a month-long installation he had first presented at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. This installation was stocked with sculptures roughly in the form of consumer goods. Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles in 1963 "because it was the most opposite thing to New York I could think of". That same year, he conceived AUT OBO DYS, performed in the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 1963. In 1965 he turned his attention to drawings and projects for imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form of small collages such as a crayon image of a fat, fuzzy teddy bear looming over the grassy fields of New York's Central Park (1965) and Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966). Oldenburg realized his first outdoor public monument in 1967; Placid Civic Monument took the form of a Conceptual performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with a crew of gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot rectangular hole in the ground. Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects elicited public ridicule before being embraced as whimsical, insightful, and fun additions to public outdoor art. From the early 1970s Oldenburg concentrated almost exclusively on public commissions. Between 1969 and 1977 Oldenburg had been in a relationship with Hannah Wilke, feminist artist, but in 1977 he married Coosje van Bruggen, a Dutch-American writer and art historian who became collaborator with him on his artwork. He had met her in 1970, when she curated an exhibition for him at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Their first collaboration came when Oldenburg was commissioned to rework Trowel I, a 1971 sculpture of an oversize garden tool, for the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands. Oldenburg has officially signed all the work he has done since 1981 with both his own name and van Bruggen's. In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota that remains a staple of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden as well as a classic image of the city. Typewriter Eraser...

Study/Falling Man (Series I), 1967 By. Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927-2009) Black Frame, Green Background Signed in Pencil Lower Right Unframed: 6 x 6 inches With Frame: 8.75 x 8....

Four Quartets Third Quartet, 1990 Mel Bochner (American, b. 1940) Signed and Numbered Verso Lithograph in Four Panels 42 x 34.5 inches 52.25 x 44 inches with frame Mel Bochner, a po...

Robert Vale Faro, 'Kaf With', color lithograph, 1945, edition 15. Signed, dated, titled and numbered '84' and '6/15' in pen, recto. Titled, numbered '#84' and '6/15' and dated '7/22/...

Robert Vale Faro, 'Going My Way?', lithograph, 1946, edition 14. Signed in pen, recto. Titled, numbered '#118 14/14' and dated '5/5/46' in pen, verso. A fine, richly-inked impression, on heavy, off-white wove paper, with full margins (1 5/8 to 2 15/16 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 13 1/8 x 7 3/8 inches; sheet size 17 x 12 3/8 inches. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. An impression of this work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. ABOUT THE ARTIST Robert Vale Faro (1902-1988) was a modernist architect and artist associated with the Chicago Bauhaus. He received his degree in architecture and design from the Armour Institute in Chicago and worked at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1924-27, where he was influenced by Harry Kurt Bieg and Le Corbusier. Upon his return to Chicago, Faro worked with the important modernist Chicago architects George and William Keck under Louis Sullivan. Faro founded the avant-garde printmaking group Vanguard in 1945. The group counted Atelier 17 artists Stanley William Hayter, Sue Fuller...