Alpha 137 Gallery Prints and Multiples

Mel Leipzig Homage to renowned modernist sculptor Isaac Witkin, at Grounds for Sculpture, 2019 Color Print on Soft Gloss Exhibition Fiber Paper Hand signed, numbered 2/20, titled and...

Scarce Collectible - one of only 100 hand signed lithographs from the Deluxe Edition of the 1 Cent Life Portfolio, acquired from the Estate of Robert Indiana: Tom Wesselmann Deluxe ...

Carl Andre Handwritten and hand signed card sent by the artist to his sister Joan Balerna, with original stamps and postmark The card depicts an image of a Picasso work On the front,...

Sister Mary Corita Kent You are God/and You are Not, 1974 Offset lithograph poster Extremely rare offset lithograph poster, published with printed copyright Immaculate Heart Communit...

After Andy Warhol The Souper Dress, ca. 1969 Screenprint on Cellulose Dress. Stamped; with the Souper Dress label at the neck 38 × 22 inches Bears original label on the inside This w...

Tracey Emin Kiss Me Kiss Me Towel, 2014 with Official plate signed COA Brand new: unframed and comes folded (framed images for inspiration only) Limited Edition silkscreen on oversiz...

Robert Indiana Numbers: Complete Portfolio of 10 Color Silkscreens (Sheehan 46-55) bound in cloth slip case (Hand Signed, inscribed and dated by Robert Indiana on the first front end...

HANS HAACKE Wir (Alle) Sind Das Volk—We (all) Are The People Color offset Lithograph on thin board LARGE: 36 × 24 inches Unframed This striking poster was created by Hans Haacke for...

Richard Haas Downtown Los Angeles MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), 1991 Etching and aquatint on paper with printers blind stamp SIgned, dated '91 and numbered 14/35 in graphite pen...

Richard Haas Manhattan View, Governor's Island (Szoke 87, 89), 1999 Aquatint Photo Etching in Colors on Arches Cover Paper with full margins Pencil signed from the limited edit...

Leo Castelli Gallery Exhibition Announcement for Frank Stella Paintings, November 25 – December 23, 1967. With a later complimentary autograph Uniquely signed in ink by Frank Stella ...

Arnaldo Pomodoro Untitled for Art and Research (Catalogue #: GR/114), 2003 Etching on wove paper Signed and annotated p.a. (Proof). One of 15 Artist Proofs, aside from the regular ed...

This exact work was exhibited at the Art Students League in an important show. (details below) Elizabeth Catlett Homage to the Panthers, 1993 Color Lithograph on wove paper with deck...

ALAN SHIELDS Peace of the Rock, 1974 Aquatint & Silkscreen Signed and numbered 14/20 in graphite pencil recto Frame included: held in original vintage frame Measurements: 19 3/4 squ...

Robert Rauschenberg I Love New York, 2001 (LARGE) Plate signed on the front Offset lithograph on high quality wove paper 39.25" x 25 inches (This ships rolled in a tube measuring 37...

Richard Serra Marilyn Monroe - Greta Garbo Poster (Hand Signed by Richard Serra), 1982 Offset Lithograph poster published by Leo Castelli Gallery Hand signed on lower front in black ...

Ed Ruscha Reading Ed Ruscha (Hand Signed by Ed Ruscha), 2012 Offset Lithograph Poster Boldly signed in black marker by Ed Ruscha on the lower front, edition of approx. 50 hand signe...

Kerry James Marshall MOCA LA Street Banner (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), 2017 Silkscreen on Vinyl 95 × 34 inches Original Gigantic Flagpole Banner exhibited on the stree...

Kerry James Marshall May 15, 2001, 2003 Four color silkscreen on Arches 88 paper Pencil signed, dated and numbered 39/60 on the front. Bears printer's blind stamp Vintage frame incl...

Kerry James Marshall Keeping the Culture, 2011 Silkscreen and linocut in colors with full margins and deckled edges on Arches paper with full margins and deckled edges 20-1/4 x 30-1/4 inches Hand signed, titled and numbered 79/100 by Kerry James Marshall in graphite pencil on the front Published by Africa House International, Chicago Unframed In September, 2025, "Kerry James Marshall: The Histories" opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This major exhibition was the largest presentation of Marshall's work in the United Kingdom and Europe, and featured more than 70 works by the the artist, including a large number of paintings and a selection of prints, drawings and sculptures. Highlights of the show include a new series of paintings that explore the transatlantic slave trade, along with Knowledge and Wonder, a mural commissioned in 1995 by the Chicago Public Library that is the largest painting Marshall has produced. The exhibition at the Royal Academy will then travel to the Kunsthaus Zurich and the Musee d'Art Modern in Paris. Kerry James Marshall's 2011 "Keeping the Culture" is based upon the artist's eponymous painting done the year earlier, which is featured in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In 2013, an original painting, upon which this work is based, sold at Christie's auction. Below is the Christie's Lot Essay for that painting: ..." Set in a revolutionary apartment in the cosmos, Kerry James Marshall's Keeping the Culture optimistically anticipates a future that pays homage to the past. Ushering in a new stage of the artist's output, Keeping the Culture shifts focus from the failed utopia of urban renewal and the commemoration of civil rights era heroes in favor of a more technically refined meditation on the preservation of the traditional and spiritual values that shaped a culture. Placed in an ultramodern environment, two siblings marvel at a projection of the earth--in which Marshall has aptly positioned the African continent toward the viewer-while their affectionate parents dance in the foreground. Overlooking the milky way, Marshall's space-age flat is decorated with earthly relics-wooden tribal sculptures...

Richard Deacon Kind of Blue (Hand Signed and Dated card), 2005 Offset lithograph postcard Boldly signed and dated 9-01-05 by the artist above the image of the sculpture 5 4/5 × 4 1/4 inches Unframed Offset lithograph postcard depicting Richard Deacon's 1995 ceramic sculpture "Kind of Blue", in the collection of the Arts Council of Great Britain. This work is hand signed and dated on the front of the image. Very good vintage condition; minor handling and discoloration around far corners (edges) to the card which will easily frame out. Richard Deacon’s voluptuous abstract forms have placed him at the forefront of British sculpture since the 1980s and, hugely influential, his works are visible in major public commissions around the world. His voracious appetite for material has seen him move between laminated wood, stainless steel, corrugated iron, polycarbonate, marble, clay, vinyl, foam and leather. As he explains: “Changing materials from one work to the next is a way of beginning again each time (and thus of finishing what had gone before)”. Deacon describes himself as a ‘fabricator’, emphasising the construction behind the finished object – although many of the works are indeed cast, modelled or carved by hand – and accordingly the logic of the fabrication is often exposed: sinuous curved forms might be bound by glue oozing between layers of wood or have screws and rivets protruding from sheets of steel, wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Such transparency highlights the reactive nature of the process: it is part of a two-way conversation between artist and material that transforms the workaday into something metaphorical. The idea of ‘fabrication’ also denotes making something up, of fiction rather than truth, and this knack for wordplay surfaces in Deacon’s titles, which might establish juxtapositions or wreak new meaning from familiar sayings or clichés – see Let’s not be Stupid (1991), No Stone Unturned (1999), Water Under the Bridge (2008) or Shiver My Timbers (2016). Richard Deacon Biography Richard Deacon was born in Bangor, Wales, UK in 1949 and lives and works in London, UK. He has a BA from St Martin’s School of Art, London, UK (1972) and an MA in Environmental Media from the Royal College of Art, London, UK (1977). Solo exhibitions include Kula Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Split, Croatia (2021); Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium (2017); San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, USA (2017); Prague City Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic (2017); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2016), Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2015); Tate Britain, London, UK (2014); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2011); Musée de la Ville de Strasbourg, France (2010); Portland Art Museum, Oregon, USA (2008); PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, USA (2001); MACCSI, Caracas, Venezuela (1996); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK (1989) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA (1988). He represented Wales at the Venice Biennale, Italy (2007) and has participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy (2012), Glasgow International, UK (2006) and documenta 9, Kassel, Germany (1992). He won the Turner Prize in 1987 and the Robert Jakobsen...

Sam Francis Untitled Abstract Expressionist print for the 1984 Olympics, 1982 Offset Lithograph on Parsons Diploma Parchment paper, hand signed with COA from publisher for Olympic Co...

Carl Andre Zinc: Historic Ace Gallery poster (Hand Signed by Carl Andre), 2007 Limited Edition Offset lithograph poster (hand signed by Carl Andre) ...

Alan Shields Treasure Rute I, 1979 Relief, stamping, linocut, collage on handmade paper Titled, numbered, signed, and dated Treasure Rute I 1/11 Alan Shields 1979 on the bottom front...

Jasper Johns Art Card: The Seasons (Spring), hand signed by Jasper Johns, 1987 Offset lithograph postcard (hand signed by Jasper Johns) Hand signed on the front by Jasper Johns Prove...

Damien Hirst Pegwell Bay, H13-6, from Where the Land Meets the Sea, 2023 Laminated Giclée print on aluminium composite panel 35 2/5 × 35 2/5 in 89.9 × 89.9 cm Hand-signed on the lab...

Richard Phillips Miss Parkett for Parkett 71, 2004 5 Color Lithograph on Somerset White paper Hand signed, numbered 37/70 and dated on lower front 25 4/5 × 20 inches Unframed This 5-...

Christo Wrapped Paris Review (Deluxe hand signed edition), 1982 Lithograph and offset lithograph Hand signed and numbered 244/250 by Christo on the front in graphite pencil (there is...

Andy Warhol Deluxe Signed Edition of Film Festival Lincoln Center (Feldman Schellmann, II.19), 1967 Silkscreen, die-cut on opaque acrylic Edition 2/200 (Signed and numbered on the back with engraving pen) Hand-signed by artist, As this work was done on acrylic, Warhol signed and numbered it by hand on verso with an engraving needle. Printed date with copyright Frame included: Elegantly framed in a museum quality wood frame with UV plexiglass. A die-cut window has been created in the back of the frame to reveal Warhol's incised signature and edition Publisher: Leo Castelli, New York Printer: Chiron Press, New York Catalogue Raisonne: Feldman Schellmann, II.19 This work is often hung and displayed both vertically and horizontally - see photos for inspiration This work is one of only 200 done on opaque acrylic rather than wove paper, signed and numbered on the opaque acrylic by Andy Warhol with an engraving pen. (Separately, there was an unsigned edition of 500 on wove paper). What distinguishes this rare, extremely desirable signed edition of 200, other than that it is signed and numbered by hand by Andy Warhol, is that the black graphic text FIFTH NEW YORK is placed directly over the text Film Festival of Lincoln Center; whereas in the edition of 500, the text black text FIFTH NEW YORK is placed on top of the white text. An innovative feature that appears in this special edition is a perforated line running across the surface of the print, at its triangular cut out sides, mimicking the tear line present in real commercial movie admissions tickets. Chiron Press commissioned by Lincoln Center, devised a special process expressly to imprint the edition with this perforation using a die cut stamp. This work is quintessential early Warhol, with characteristic bright neon colors, featuring text, along with the artist's very recognizable flower motif. The Lincoln Center ticket...

Jamie Nares When the Language was Young, 2010 Lithograph in red on polymer Pencil signed, dated and numbered 13/50 lower front Lithograph in red on acrylic Pencil signed, dated and ...

Raymond Pettibon Revolutionary Sex (Deluxe signed edition of Patty Hearst SLA Poster), 1982 Offset print (hand signed and numbered) Hand-signed by artist, Boldly signed by Raymond Pe...

Robert Indiana (after) Pop Art: Selections from the Museum of Modern Art, 1999 Offset lithograph poster on poster board Autographed, dated and inscribed "for Patricia and Larry" in ...

Chuck Close, Richard Estes Picturing America (hand signed by both Chuck Close and Richard Estes), 2009 Hardback Monograph (hand signed by Chuck Close and Richard Estes) Boldly signed by Chuck Close and Richard Estes 9 1/4 × 10 × 1/2 inches We have not seen another hand signed by both Chuck Close and Richard Estes anywhere else in the world - ever. And none with such fine provenance: This highly collectible monograph was hand signed by Chuck Close for the present owner at a special event held by Artifex Press held at the New York Public Library; then signed by Richard Estes at his retrospective at the Museum of Design in New York Published on the occasion of the exhibition Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s/Picturing America: Fotorealismus der 70er Jahre. The book was signed for the present owner by Chuck Close at Artifex Press held at the New York Public Library on December 19, 2012, and by Richard Estes at the Museum of Design. About the monograph, which itself is a collectors item: Title: Picturing America Publisher: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2009 Hardcover, 176 pp. replete with full-color images of the photorealistic work of some of the most celebrated names in American realism painting...

Robert Morris (1931-2018) The Mind/Body Problem (Hand signed and dated), 1995 Offset lithograph 33 × 23 1/2 inches 83.8 × 59.7 cm Edition of 250 (this is a uniquely hand signed prin...

Robert Morris Robert Morris: Labyrinths--Voice--Blind Time (The Castelli-Sonnabend Poster), 1974 Offset lithograph poster Vintage metal frame Included This is the original of Robert ...

Jim Dine The Christmas Print (Burg, 26), 2001 Drypoint, direct gravure, etching over offset lithograph with hand coloring by artist in oil stick, on T.H. Saunders paper, the full she...

Gretchen Bender Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of God in Vain (The Third Commandment), 1987 2 Color Lithograph and embossment on reflective mylar Signed and numbered 37 from the limite...

Andy Warhol Portrait of Roy Lichtenstein, 1975 Polaroid dye-diffusion print Authenticated by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, bears the Foundation stamp verso Frame included: Framed in white wood frame with UV plexiglass; with die-cut window in the back to show official Warhol Foundation authentication stamp and text Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (Artwork) Authenticated and stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol/Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts An impressive piece of Pop Art history! A must-have for fans and collectors of both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein: This is a unique, authenticated color Polaroid taken by one Pop Art legend, Andy Warhol, of his most formidable contemporary and, in many respects, rival, Roy Lichtenstein. One of only a few portraits Andy Warhol took of Roy Lichtenstein, during one tense photo shoot. Both iconic artists, colleagues and, perhaps lesser known to the public, rivals, would be represented at the time by the renowned Leo Castelli Gallery. The truth is - they were really more rivals than friends. (the rivalry intensified when Warhol, who was working with Walt Disney, discovered that Lichtenstein painted Mickey Mouse before he did!!) Leo Castelli was committed to Roy Lichtenstein, and, it's easy to forget today, wasn't that interested in Warhol as he considered Lichtenstein the greater talent and he could relate better with Roy on a personal level. However, Ivan Karp, who worked at Castelli, was very interested in Warhol, as were some powerful European dealers, as well as many wealthy and influential American and European collectors. That was the start of Warhol's bypassing the traditional gallery model - so that dealers like Castelli could re-discover him after everybody else had. Warhol is known to have taken hundreds of self-portrait polaroid photographs - shoe boxes full - and he took many dozens of images of celebrities like Blondie and Farrah Fawcett. But only a small number of photographic portraits of fellow Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein -- each unique,- are known to have appeared on the market over the past half a century - all from the same photo session. This is one of them. There is another Polaroid - from this same (and only) sitting, in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum in California. There really weren't any other collaborations between these two titans, making the resulting portrait from this photo session extraordinary. It is fascinating to study Roy Lichtenstein's face and demeanor in this photograph, in the context of the great sense of competition, but perhaps even greater, albeit uneasy respect, these two larger than life Pop art titans had for each other: Like Leo Castelli, Roy Lichtenstein was Jewish of European descent; whereas Warhol was Catholic and quintessentially American, though also of European (Polish) descent. They were never going to be good friends, but this portrait, perhaps even arranged by Leo Castelli, represents an uneasy acknowledgement there would be room at the top for both of them. Floated, framed with die cut back revealing authentication details, and ready to hang. Measurements: 9 9/16 x 8 9/16 x 9/16 inches (frame) 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (window) 4.16 x 3.15 inches (sheet) Authenticated by the Estate of Andy Warhol/The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Estate Stamped: Stamped with the Andy Warhol Estate, Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts stamp, numbered "B 512536P", with the Estate of Andy Warhol stamp and inscribed UP on the reverse. Bears the Warhol Foundation unique inventory number. Roy Lichtenstein Biography Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City, the first of two children born to Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893–1946) was a successful real estate broker, and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896–1991), a homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet, and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting the nightspots in Midtown to hear it. Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and was graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person’s drawings) “was considered brilliant, and somebody’s else’s, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone.”i Lichtenstein’s questioning of accepted canons of taste was encouraged by Hoyt L. Sherman, a teacher whom he maintained was the person who showed him how to see and whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own. In February 1943, Lichtenstein was drafted, and he was sent to Europe in 1945. As part of the infantry, he saw action in France, Belgium and Germany. He made sketches throughout his time in Europe and, after peace was declared there, he intended to study at the Sorbonne. Lichtenstein arrived in Paris in October 1945 and enrolled in classes in French language and civilization, but soon learned that his father was gravely ill. He returned to New York in January 1946, a few weeks before Milton Lichtenstein died. In the spring of that year, Lichtenstein went back to OSU to complete his BFA and in the fall he was invited to join the faculty as an instructor. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky (1921–80), who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland where Lichtenstein had exhibited his work. While he was teaching, Lichtenstein worked on his master’s degree, which he received in 1949. During his second stint at OSU, Lichtenstein became closer to Sherman, and began teaching his method on how to organize and unify a composition. Lichtenstein remained appreciative of Sherman’s impact on him. He gave his first son the middle name of “Hoyt,” and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lichtenstein began working in series and his iconography was drawn from printed images. His first sustained theme, intimate paintings and prints in the vein of Paul Klee that poked lyrical fun at medieval knights, castles and maidens, may well have been inspired by a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Lichtenstein then took an ironic look at nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books, creating Cubist interpretations of cowboys and Indians spiked with a faux-primitive whimsy. As with his most celebrated Pop paintings of the 1960s, Lichtenstein gravitated toward what he would characterize as the “dumbest” or “worst” visual item he could find and then went on to alter or improve it. In the 1960s, commercial art was considered beneath contempt by the art world; in the early 1950s, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, nineteenth-century American narrative and genre paintings were at the nadir of their reputation among critics and collectors. Paraphrasing, particularly the paraphrasing of despised images, became a paramount feature of Lichtenstein’s art. Well before finding his signature mode of expression in 1961, Lichtenstein called attention to the artifice of conventions and taste that permeated art and society. What others dismissed as trivial fascinated him as classic and idealized—in his words, “a purely American mythological subject matter.”ii Lichtenstein’s teaching contract at OSU was not renewed for the 1951–52 academic year, and in the autumn of 1951 he and Isabel moved to Cleveland. Isabel Lichtenstein became an interior decorator specializing in modern design, with a clientele drawn from wealthy Cleveland families. Whereas her career blossomed, Lichtenstein did not continue to teach at the university level. He had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman, furniture designer, window dresser and rendering mechanical dials for an electrical instrument company. In response to these experiences, he introduced quirkily rendered motors, valves and other mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. In 1954, the Lichtensteins’ first son, David, was born; two years later, their second child, Mitchell, followed. Despite the relative lack of interest in his work in Cleveland, Lichtenstein did place his work with New York dealers, which always mattered immensely to him. He had his first solo show at the Carlebach Gallery in New York in 1951, followed by representation with the John Heller Gallery from 1952 to 1957. To reclaim his academic career and get closer to New York, Lichtenstein accepted a position as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, in the northern reaches of the state. He was hired to teach industrial design, beginning in September 1957. Oswego turned out to be more geographically and aesthetically isolated than Cleveland ever was, but the move was propitious, for both his art and his career. Lichtenstein broke away from representation to a fully abstract style, applying broad swaths of pigment to the canvas by dragging the paint across its surface with a rag wrapped around his arm. At the same time, Lichtenstein was embedding comic-book characters figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in brushy, expressionistic backgrounds. None of the proto-cartoon paintings from this period survive, but several pencil and pastel studies from that time, which he kept, document his intentions. Finally, when he was in Oswego, Lichtenstein met Reginald Neal, the new head of the art department at Douglass College, the women’s college of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The school was strengthening and expanding its studio art program, and when Neal needed to add a faculty member to his department, Lichtenstein was invited to apply for the job. Lichtenstein was offered the position of assistant professor, and he began teaching at Douglass in September 1960. At Douglass, Lichtenstein was thrown into a maelstrom of artistic ferment. With New York museums and galleries an hour away, and colleagues Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts at Douglass and Allan Kaprow and George Segal at Rutgers, the environment could not help but galvanize him. In June 1961, Lichtenstein returned to the idea he had fooled around with in Oswego, which was to combine cartoon characters from comic books with abstract backgrounds. But, as Lichtenstein said, “[I]t occurred to me to do it by mimicking the cartoon style without the paint texture, calligraphic line, modulation—all the things involved in expressionism.”iii Most famously, Lichtenstein appropriated the Benday dots, the minute mechanical patterning used in commercial engraving, to convey texture and gradations of color—a stylistic language synonymous with his subject matter. The dots became a trademark device forever identified with Lichtenstein and Pop Art. Lichtenstein may not have calibrated the depth of his breakthrough immediately but he did realize that the flat affect and deadpan presentation of the comic-strip panel blown up and reorganized in the Sherman-inflected way “was just so much more compelling”iv than the gestural abstraction he had been practicing. Among the first extant paintings in this new mode—based on comic strips and illustrations from advertisements—were Popeye and Look Mickey, which were swiftly followed by The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball and Step-on Can with Leg. Kaprow recognized the energy and radicalism of these canvases and arranged for Lichtenstein to show them to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Castelli was New York’s leading dealer in contemporary art, and he had staged landmark exhibitions of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in 1958 and Frank Stella in 1960. Karp was immediately attracted to Lichtenstein’s paintings, but Castelli was slower to make a decision, partly on account of the paintings’ plebeian roots in commercial art, but also because, unknown to Lichtenstein, two other artists had recently come to his attention—Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist—and Castelli was only ready for one of them. After some deliberation, Castelli chose to represent Lichtenstein, and the first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at the gallery from February 10 to March 3, 1962. The show sold out and made Lichtenstein notorious. By the time of Lichtenstein’s second solo exhibition at Castelli in September 1963, his work had been showcased in museums and galleries around the country. He was usually grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. Taken together, their work was viewed as a slap in the face to Abstract Expressionism and, indeed, the Pop artists shifted attention away from many members of the New York School. With the advent of critical and commercial success, Lichtenstein made significant changes in his life and continued to investigate new possibilities in his art. After separating from his wife, he moved from New Jersey to Manhattan in 1963; in 1964, he resigned from his teaching position at Douglass to concentrate exclusively on his work. The artist also ventured beyond comic book subjects, essaying paintings based on oils by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso, as well as still lifes and landscapes. Lichtenstein became a prolific printmaker and expanded into sculpture, which he had not attempted since the mid-1950s, and in both two- and three-dimensional pieces, he employed a host of industrial or “non-art” materials, and designed mass-produced editioned objects that were less expensive than traditional paintings and sculpture. Participating in one such project—the American Supermarket show in 1964 at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, for which he designed a shopping bag—Lichtenstein met Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939), a gallery employee, whom he married in 1968. The late 1960s also saw Lichtenstein’s first museum surveys: in 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum initiated a traveling retrospective, in 1968 the Stedelijk Musem in Amsterdam presented his first European retrospective, and in 1969 he had his first New York retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Wanting to grow, Lichtenstein turned away from the comic book subjects that had brought him prominence. In the late 1960s his work became less narrative and more abstract, as he continued to meditate on the nature of the art enterprise itself. He began to explore and deconstruct the notion of brushstrokes—the building blocks of Western painting. Brushstrokes are conventionally conceived as vehicles of expression, but Lichtenstein made them into a subject. Modern artists have typically maintained that the subject of a painting is painting itself. Lichtenstein took this idea one imaginative step further: a compositional element could serve as the subject matter of a work and make that bromide ring true. The search for new forms and sources was even more emphatic after 1970, when Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein bought property in Southampton, New York, and made it their primary residence. During the fertile decade of the 1970s, Lichtenstein probed an aspect of perception that had steadily preoccupied him: how easily the unreal is validated as the real because viewers have accepted so many visual conceptions that they don’t analyze what they see. In the Mirror series, he dealt with light and shadow upon glass, and in the Entablature series, he considered the same phenomena by abstracting such Beaux-Art architectural elements as cornices, dentils, capitals and columns. Similarly, Lichtenstein created pioneering painted bronze sculpture that subverted the medium’s conventional three-dimensionality and permanence. The bronze forms were as flat and thin as possible, more related to line than volume, and they portrayed the most fugitive sensations—curls of steam, rays of light and reflections on glass. The steam, the reflections and the shadow were signs for themselves that would immediately be recognized as such by any viewer. Another entire panoply of works produced during the 1970s were complex encounters with Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Lichtenstein expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, black, white and green, and invented and combined forms. He was not merely isolating found images, but juxtaposing, overlapping, fragmenting and recomposing them. In the words of art historian Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein’s virtuosic compositions were “a rich dialogue of forms—all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources.”v In the early 1980s, which coincided with re-establishing a studio in New York City, Lichtenstein was also at the apex of a busy mural career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had completed four murals; between 1983 and 1990, he created five. He also completed major commissions for public sculptures in Miami Beach, Columbus, Minneapolis, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore. Lichtenstein created three major series in the 1990s, each emblematic of his ongoing interest in solving pictorial problems. The Interiors, mural-sized canvases inspired by a miniscule advertisement in an Italian telephone...

Vik Muniz (after) Paper Crane for Japan (Autographed and dedicated "To Kevin") Color offset Lithograph 24 × 36 inches Boldly signed, dated and dedicated in black marker on the front...

20th LA Film Fest (Hand Signed), 2014 Offset Lithograph with Ed Ruscha authograph 36 × 24 inches Boldly signed on the front in black marker Published by Film Independent Unframed Thi...

Ed Ruscha GOD, 2010 Digital Light Jet Print in Artist-Designed Frame Edition 48/50 Hand-signed by artist, Signed, numbered and dated 48/50 by Ed Ruscha in black marker on the back P...

Ed Ruscha Paintings (Hand signed by Ed Ruscha), 2014 Offset lithograph print (Hand signed on the front) Published by Gagosian Gallery, Rome 26 × 27 inches Unframed Highly collectible when hand signed by Ed Ruscha Provenance: Donated by the artist to a major arts charity Acquired by the present owner from the above Accompanied by original documentation sheet from the charity as provenance This poster featuring Gal Chews Same Gum Since 1963 (2014) was produced in 2014, in conjunction with Ed Ruscha: Paintings at Gagosian, Rome. The exhibition included recent paintings in which the artist continues to meditate on the melancholy of the Psycho Spaghetti Westerns in complex pictures that conflate his signature elements with the visual devices, perspectival techniques, and refined atmospheres of old master paintings to depict the romantic road trip of youth reduced to roadside dystopia. Provenance: donated by Ed Ruscha to a major charitable arts organization. About Ed Ruscha: There are things that I’m constantly looking at that I feel should be elevated to greater status, almost to philosophical status or to a religious status. That’s why taking things out of context is a useful tool to an artist. It’s the concept of taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter. —Ed Ruscha At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist ... who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. In 1956, Ruscha moved from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. During his time in art school, he had been painting in the manner of Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and came across a reproduction of Jasper Johns’s Target...

MAN RAY Hands, 1966 Silkscreen on Plexiglass Published by Gemini GEL Measurements: Image: 20"h x 16"w sheet plexi: 25.5"h x 19.5"w overall (with frame): 26.75"h x 20.75"w. Edition ...

William T. Wiley Good Luck with Your Art-istry (Hand Signed Card), 2002 Offset lithograph invitation card. Hand signed in green ink with inscription "Good Luck with your ART istry" ...

Karel Appel Miss World First Class Pretty (Deluxe hand signed edition of the 1 Cent Life Portfolio, from the estate of artist Robert Indiana), 1964 Lithograph splayed across two shee...

Banksy Authorised Graffiti Area, 2004 Authorized VIP sticker on Fasson backing 5 9/10 × 4 13/100 inches Unframed, not signed This early (2004) Banksy sticker is a rare and highly col...

Extremely rare when hand signed; the regular limited edition was not signed. Tracey Emin Docket and His Bird Collection plate (uniquely hand signed and inscribed by Tracey Emin), 20...

Jasper Johns and Phong Bui Offset lithograph card of portrait of Jasper Johns by Phong Bui (hand signed and dated by Jasper Johns), 2008 Card depicting a portrait of Jasper Johns by ...

Alexander Calder McGovern for McGovernment (Signed by BOTH Alexander Calder and George McGovern), 1972 Lithograph on wove paper with deckled edges. Hand signed and Numbered by Calder...

SHEPARD FAIREY Global Warning - Global Warming (Andy Warhol Edition), 2009 Silkscreen on wove paper 24 × 18 inches Pencil signed and numbered 264/450 on the front Unframed Global War...

Keith Haring Rare Hiroshima Peace Celebration poster (hand signed by Keith Haring), from the Patrick Eddington Collection, 1988 Framed Original offset lithograph (Hand signed by Keit...

Nancy Graves Calibrate, 1981 16 color etching, aquatint, engraving and lithograph. Printed from 5 copper plates, 1 zinc plate and 1 stone Hand signed, numbered 12/30 dated on the fro...

David Hockney Grimms' Fairy Tales (Hand Signed), 1996 Offset Lithograph Poster Boldly signed in ink marker on the top front 16 1/2 × 11 1/2 inches Unframed This signed offset lithogr...

Jack Youngerman Blue/Yellow from New York City Center of Music & Drama Portfolio, 1968 Silkscreen on wove paper Hand signed, dated and numbered 75/144, in graphite by Jack Youngerman...

Robert Rauschenberg Rare 1960s Musee D'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris poster, 1968 Offset Lithograph Edition of 500 27 1/2 × 21 inches Unframed, not signed Accompanied by Certifica...

Richard Haas View of the Mall From a Castle Tower, 1983 Seven-Color Lithograph: Hand Drawn on English Somerset Satin 100% rag paper 14 1/4 × 43 3/4 inches Edition of 7 (Hors Commerce...

Tracey Emin, Billy and Traci in a Pub, 1984 Woodcut in dark blue on Japon paper, signed and inscribed 'lots love Traci xx' in pencil on the backboard, printed by the artist Test prin...

Agnes Martin Untitled #10, 1990 Lithograph on vellum transparency paper Unsigned Limited Edition of 2500 Publisher: Nemela Lenzen GmbH, Monchengladback Stedelijk Museum, ...

Kenneth Noland Untitled, 1987 Monotype with hand painting on wove paper Signed and dated in pencil on the reverse, with the artist's initials blind stamped lower right Unique Frame i...

John Chamberlain (Hand Signed), 1988 Offset Lithograph Poster (Hand Signed by John Chamberlain) 30 × 20 inches Boldly signed on the recto in white grease marker by the artist in his ...