1 of 4

Olympic Games Munich 1972 Limited Edition Signed by Artist Jacob Lawrence

$13,729.42List Price

About the Item

Rare Olympic Games Munich 1972 Limited Edition 'Poster entitled 'Five Black Athletes in a Relay Race' signed by Jacob Lawrence Dimension: Sheet Size: Length 109.5 × 69.5 cm Image Size: Length: 87 × 64 cm Edition Size: 200 Edition Number: 24 marked in pencil by Jacob Lawrence Signed: Jacob Lawrence 71 in pencil by Jacob Lawrence Serigraph – Screenprint Printed words on the left hand corner of the sheet read as follows: © Edition Olympia 1972 Gmbh 1971 Dietz Officin Lengmoos Bold colours fresh and vibrant as when originally issued Slight ruffling of the paper in a small section of the bottom of the sheet and two minor spots of foxing at the bottom border of the sheet. Overall condition: Very good for age Jacob Lawrence was one of a number of artists who were invited to design posters for the 1972 Olympic Games held in Munich. He created an image to commemorate the involvement of black athletes in the Olympic Games, as track was a field in which they had traditionally excelled. This iconic poster depicts five black runners with grimacing faces take giant strides around a large, curving track as they head toward the finish line. They hold batons in their hands to show that they are competing in relay race. Each athlete is shown with his arms, legs, and head in a slightly different position, one has his head back and his right leg stretched forward, almost straight. Lawrence used bold colours to depict the runners' stylised faces and legs as well as the repeated shapes of the track. Lawrence combined the flat, simplified shapes and empty spaces of modernism with silhouetted figures and the rhythmic patterns and colours of Harlem scenes. He labelled his pictorial style 'dynamic cubism'. Lawrence's poster embraces several themes: a) the intensity of competition in a relay race with invariably dramatic endings; b) memories of the African American athlete, Jesse Owens' four gold medals, including one as a member of the 400-metre relay team, won at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin in the face of Nazi claims of racial superiority; and c) the determination of African Americans to compete on the world stage after centuries of discrimination in their home-country. Biographical Details of the Artist Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlanta City, New Jersey, in 1917 as his family travelled north, part of the Great Migration of people from the South. After his parents split up, his mother moved the family to Harlem where a movement known as the Harlem Renaissance was flourishing. Lawrence studied painting the Harlem Art Workshop and received much encouragement from African American artists, Augusta Savage and Charles Alston and art critic, Alain Locke. He received national recognition at the age of twenty-three with The Migration of the Negro, an exhibition of sixty paintings about the Great Migration. This series was so admired that both the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., wanted to buy them. Eventually, it was divided between the two museums. During World War II, Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard, where he served on the first integrated ship and was promoted to a rank higher than the steward's mate. After the war, his career included commissions for murals and a Time magazine cover; teaching positions at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the University of Washington in Seattle. Among the awards Lawrence received in his distinguished are the following: Spingarn Medal (1970), the Us National Medal of Arts (1990), Algur H Meadows Award for Excellence (1996) and The Washington Medal of Art (1998) The 1972 Munich poster comes from his original 1971 painting which now hangs in the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, Washington). There were two serigraph versions printed, a limited edition of 200 serigraphs/screenprints on heavy paper, hand-signed and numbered by Vasarely, and a limited edition serigraph of 4,000 copies again on a heavy paper (heavier than the standard poster paper)

Dimensions:
Height: 43.12 in (109.5 cm)Width: 27.37 in (69.5 cm)Depth: 0.4 in (1 cm)
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Paper
Place of Origin:
Germany
Period:
1970-1979
Date of Manufacture:
1971
Condition:
As fully described condition.
Seller Location:
Pewsey, GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU7343234220512