Stanley Boxer Animal Prints

Elephants. 1979 edition 2/20 Hand signed and dated Framed 24.5 X 28. Sheet 23 X 26 This is from a series of prints Boxer produced at Tyler Graphics between 1975 and 1979. Over this period, he created several series of intricately rendered figurative works, illustrating whimsical scenes featuring animals, plants and nubile winged figures. Boxer had, however, been making drawings of this nature throughout his career, and he insisted they were closely connected to his abstracts, made with similar gestures and motivation. The Tate Museum received twenty-five of Stanley Boxer’s prints as a gift of Kenneth Tyler from Tyler Graphics, comprising a complete portfolio of Ring of Dust in Bloom, 1976, an incomplete portfolio of Carnival of Animals, 1979, and two individual prints. This work is from Carnival of Animals, a portfolio of fourteen intaglio prints on handmade paper. Tate holds eleven of the prints from this portfolio (Elephants, Swan and Fossils are not in Tate’s collection). Stanley Boxer (1926-May 8, 2000) was an American abstract expressionist artist best known for thickly painted abstract works of art. He was also an accomplished sculptor and printmaker. He received awards from the Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts. Boxer was born in New York City, and began his formal education after World War II, when he left the Navy and studied at the Art Students League of New York. He drew, painted, made prints, and sculpted. His work was recognized by art critic Clement Greenberg, who categorized him as a color field painter, A group that included Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and Mark Rothko and was a form of Abstract Expressionism and later included Helen Frankenthaler, Ad Reinhardt, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Jules Olitski, Raymond Parker and Morris Louis. Boxer himself was adamant in rejecting this stylistic label. Over the years, he remained loyal to the materially dense abstract mode on which his reputation rested.. Art critic Grace Glueck wrote "Never part of a movement or trend, though obviously steeped in the language of Modernism, the abstract painter Stanley Boxer was a superb manipulator of surfaces, intensely bonding texture and color." In 1953 Boxer had his first solo exhibition of paintings in New York City, and showed regularly thereafter until his death. His paintings and sculpture were represented in New York City during the late 1960s through 1974 by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, then by the André Emmerich Gallery from 1975 until 1993, and finally by Salander-O'Reilly Galleries until its demise in 2007. Richard Waller, director of the University of Richmond's Harnett Museum of Art, describes his evolution as an artist: You can see the shift from working with figurative imagery in the 1940s and early '50s to abstraction in the late '50s. The abstraction in the late '60s and '70s was more derived from color-field issues. In the 1980s, Boxer really hit his stride in larger works with lots of thick paint and splashes of color. He sold a lot, and his success in the art world in the 1980s gave him the freedom to do what he wanted to do most. He was married to painter and artist Joyce Weinstein. The Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida hosted an exhibition entitled Expanding Boundaries: Lyrical Abstraction Selections from the Permanent Collection. At the time the museum issued a statement that said in part: "Lyrical Abstraction arose in the 1960s and 70s, following the challenge of Minimalism and Conceptual art. Many artists began moving away from geometric, hard-edge, and minimal styles, toward more lyrical, sensuous, romantic abstractions worked in a loose gestural style. These "lyrical abstractionists" sought to expand the boundaries of abstract painting, and to revive and reinvigorate a painterly 'tradition' in American art. "Characterized by intuitive and loose paint handling, spontaneous expression, illusionist space, acrylic staining, process, occasional imagery, and other painterly techniques, the abstract works included in this exhibition sing with rich fluid color and quiet energy. Works by the following artists associated with Lyrical Abstraction will be included: Natvar Bhavsar, Stanley Boxer, Lamar Briggs, Dan Christensen, David Diao, Friedel Dzubas, Sam Francis, Dorothy Gillespie, Cleve Gray, Paul Jenkins, Ronnie Landfield, Pat Lipsky, Joan Mitchell, Robert Natkin, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Garry Rich, John...