USA - Prints and Multiples

This double-page offset lithograph, printed on pages 20 and 21 of Derrière le Miroir (DLM) No. 182, features a fold line down the center, as originally issued. The artwork depicts a ...

Russell Chatham lithograph signed and numbered “October” . In goood condition. Some minor frame wear and one scratch on the glass. Measures 54x43

Samella Sanders Lewis, 'The House of Shango', lithograph, 1992, edition 60. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '31/60' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on Arches cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 1/4 to 3 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 24 x 18 inches (610 x 457 mm); sheet size 30 inches x 22 1/4 inches (762 x 565 mm). Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THIS WORK “The title of this piece is an unmistakable harkening to African roots. Shango is a religious practice with origins in Yoruba (Nigerian) belief, deifying a god of thunder by the same name. Shango has been adopted in the Caribbean, most notably in Trinidad and Tobago, a fact that underscores the importance of transnationalism to Samella Lewis’s piece. Her work often grapples with issues of race in the U.S., and The House of Shango is no exception. Through a reliance on the gradual transformation of Shango—one that took place across continents and time—Lewis’s piece forms a powerful link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean counterparts. The figure depicted in the piece appears to emerge, quite literally, from the house of Shango. Given the roots and transformative process of the religion, The House of Shango can draw attention to the historical intersections to which black American culture is indebted.” —Laura Woods, Scripps College, Ruth Chander Williamson Gallery, Collection Highlights, 2018 ABOUT THE ARTIST Samella Lewis’ lifelong career as an artist, art historian, critic, curator, collector, and advocate of African American art has helped empower generations of artists in the United States and worldwide, earning her the designation “the Godmother of African American art.” Born and raised in Jim Crow era New Orleans, Lewis began her art education at Dillard University in 1941, transferring to Hampton University in Virginia, where she earned her B. A. and master's degrees. She completed her master's and a doctorate in art history and cultural anthropology at Ohio State University in 1951, becoming the first female African American to earn a doctorate in fine art and art history. Lewis taught art at Morgan State University while completing her doctorate. She became the first Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Florida A&M University in 1953. That same year Lewis also became the first African American to convene the National Conference of African American artists held at Florida A&M University. She was a professor at the State University of New York, California State University, Long Beach, and at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Lewis co-founded, with Bernie Casey, the Contemporary Crafts Gallery in Los Angeles in 1970. In 1973, she served on the selection committee for the exhibition BLACKS: USA: 1973 held at the New York Cultural Center. Samella Lewis's 1969 catalog 'Black Artists on Art', featured accomplished black artists typically overlooked in mainstream art galleries. She said of the book, "I wanted to make a chronology of African American artists, and artists of African descent, to document our history. The historians weren't doing it. It was really about the movement." From the 1960s through the 1970s, her work, which included lithographs, linocuts, and serigraphs, reflected her concerns with the values of human dignity, democracy, and freedom of expression. Between 1969 and 70, Lewis and E.J. Montgomery were consultants for a groundbreaking exhibition at the Oakland Public L designed to create greater awareness of African American history and art. Lewis was the founder of the International Review of African American Art in 1975. In 1976, she founded the Museum of African-American Art with a group of artistic, academic, business, and community leaders in Los Angeles, California. Lewis, the museum’s senior curator, organized exhibitions and developed new ways of educating the public about African American art. She celebrated African American art as an 'art of experience’ inspired by the artists’ lives. And she espoused the concept of African American art as an 'art of tradition', urging museums to explore the African roots of African American art. In 1984, Lewis produced an extensive monograph on Elizabeth Catlett, her beloved mentor at Dillard University. Lewis has been collecting art since 1942, focusing primarily on the WPA era and work created during the Harlem Renaissance. Pieces from her collection were acquired by the Hampton University Museum in Virginia, the world’s earliest collection of African American fine art...

large scale original photograph from a series of conceptual motivational messages on classic Americana billboard signs in iconic landscape of the American West YES by Frank Schott ...

Medium: lithograph (after the poster). Printed in Paris in 1950 by Mourlot Freres, this lithograph faithfully reproduces the original Toulouse-Lautrec poster in a smaller-size format...

A fine limited edition silver screenprint of Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie I) by well known American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, PA, studied at the Ca...

mesmerizing light reflections of glistening sunlight on turquoise aquamarine water surface, an homage to the iconic pool reflections paintings by artist David Hockney H2O lll by Eri...

"Tapiz of Tarragona" 1970 Lithography. virtual frame 76x56 Cm. 200 Copies Edition Exemplary HC Papel Guarro with Water Filigree of the Sala Gaspar Signed in Monogramada and numbered ...

Original 1964 Los Angeles, California vintage travel poster. Professionally archivally linen-backed in mint condition. This is one of four ...

Antique British Steamship Etching This moody etching by Joseph Kirkpatrick (British, b. 1874 d. 1936) features a steamboat in the midst of choppy w...

Large scale original photograph of vintage television set with iconic western movie in American Wild West landscape Cowboy TV by Frank Schott 30 x 40 inches (76 x 102cm) signed edi...

This wonderful litho was designed by Jean Michel Basquiat for his exhibition at Yvon Lambert, Paris in 1988. Super vibrant colors with many interesting details of images and words co...

Medium: Limited Edition Etching Style: Portrait Painting Size: 5 x 4 inches Frame Size: 11.75 x 8.25 inches Condition: This artwork is in great condition for its age. Signature: Ha...

Original exhibition poster featuring the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, created for the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark. Printed in Paris by Mourlot, the poster captures on...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Mademoiselle L.L. (Miss L.L.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates f...

Medium: original lithograph. Printed in Paris in 1967 by Clot, Bramsen et Georges and issued in an edition of 2500 for "Les Temps Situationistes" (The Situationist Times -- a radical...

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...

A black and white, large-scale surreal mythical landscape of an ocean voyage, with a snake wrapped around a clock, a ship, Venus sculpture, greek urns, and snakes, printed in black o...

Cy Twombly Allusions, Bay of Naples (from the collection of Donald Baechler), 1975 Color offset lithograph and photo lithograph on wove paper Signed and numbered 56/80 in ink on the ...

Artist: John Kacere (1930-1999) Title: Illeana II Year: 1991 Edition: A.P.; 100, plus proofs. Medium: Lithograph on wove paper Size: 23.5 x 31.5 inches Inscription: Signed by the art...

A group of 14 Blackfeet Indians prints created by the artist Winold Reiss. The Great Northern Railway printed and released these prints in c. 1940. This is for the entire group...

The Original Coppertone Italian suntan lotion vintage poster is in small format. It is backed with archival linen and is in Grade A condition. It is ready to frame. Step Back in Time, One Tan at a Time! Elevate your space with a piece of pop culture history! This original Coppertone vintage...

"Homage to the Square - P2, F32, I1" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original screenprints that...

Artist: Roy Lichtenstein Title: Girl Portfolio: 1¢ Life Medium: Lithograph on white wove paper Date: 1964 Edition: 2000 Frame Size: 20 3/4" x 18 5/8" Sheet Size: 16 1/4" x 11 1/2" Im...

David Hockney Richard Strauss: Los Angeles Music Center Opera (Hand Signed and Inscribed), 1993 Offset Lithograph (hand signed and inscribed by David Hockney) 30 × 20 inches Signed a...

Gustave Baumann, 'Taos Placita', color woodcut, 1947, edition 125. Baumann 132. Signed, titled, and numbered '20-125' in pencil; with the artist’s Hand-in-Heart chop. A superb, richly-inked impression, with fresh colors, on fibrous oatmeal wove paper; the full sheet with margins (2 to 3 1/8 inches); slight rippling at the left sheet edge, in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 9 5/8 x 11 1/4 inches (244 x 286 mm); sheet size 13 1/4 x 17 inches (337 x 432 mm). Collections: Harwood Museum of Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Art Museum, Wichita Art Museum. ABOUT THE ARTIST Gustave Baumann (1881-1971) was a renowned printmaker and a leading figure of the American color woodcut revival whose exquisite craftsmanship and vibrant imagery captured the essence of the Southwest. "A brilliant printmaker, Baumann brought to the medium a full mastery of the craft of woodworking that he acquired from his father, a German cabinetmaker. This craftsmanship was coupled with a strong artistic training that resulted in the handsome objects we see in the exhibition today. After discovering New Mexico in 1918, Baumann began to explore in his woodblock prints of this period the light. color, and architectural forms of that landscape. His prints of this period are among the most beautiful and poetic images of the American West." —Lewis I. Sharp, Director, Denver Art Museum Baumann, the son of a craftsman, immigrated to the United States from Germany with his family when he was ten, settling in Chicago. From 1897 to 1904, he studied in the evenings at the Art Institute of Chicago, working in a commercial printmaking shop during the day. In 1905, he returned to Germany to attend the Kunstwerbe Schule in Munich, where he decided on a career in printmaking. He returned to Chicago in 1906 and worked for a few years as a graphic designer of labels. Baumann made his first prints in 1909 and exhibited them at the Art Institute of Chicago the following year. In 1910, he moved to the artists’ colony in Nashville, Indiana, where he explored the creative and commercial possibilities of a career as a printmaker. In 1915, he exhibited his color woodcuts at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, winning the gold medal. Among Baumann’s ongoing commercial activities was his work for the Packard Motor Car Company from 1914 to 1920 where he produced designs, illustrations, and color woodcuts until 1923. In 1919, Baumann’s printmaking work dominated the important exhibition of American color woodcuts at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Twenty-six of his prints were included, far more than the works of any other artist. A set of his blocks, a preparatory drawing, and seven progressive proofs complemented the exhibition. That same year, Baumann worked in New York and, over the summer, in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His airy images of Cape Cod employed soft, pastel colors and occasionally showed the influence of the white-line woodcut technique. Many of his Chicago artist friends had traveled to the southwest, and Baumann became intrigued by their paintings, souvenirs, and stories of an exotic place named Taos, New Mexico. In the summer of 1918, he spent the summer in Taos sketching and painting before visiting Santa Fe. Paul Walter, the director of the Museum of New Mexico, offered him a studio in the museum's basement. Inspired by the rugged beauty of the Southwest—the vibrant colors and dramatic landscapes of the region became a central theme in his work, influencing his artistic style and subject matter for the remainder of his career. Later in the decade, he traveled to the West Coast and made prints of California landscape. Baumann's prints became synonymous with the Southwest, capturing the spirit of its place in America's identity with a unique sense of authenticity and reverence. His iconic images of desert vistas, pueblo villages, and indigenous cultures served as visual tributes to the region's rich cultural heritage, earning him a dedicated following among collectors and curators alike. A true craftsman and artist, Baumann completed every step of the printmaking process himself, cutting each block, mixing the inks, and printing every impression on the handmade paper he selected. His dedication to true craftsmanship and his commitment to preserving the integrity of his artistic vision earned him widespread acclaim and recognition within the art world. About the vibrant colors he produced, Baumann stated, “A knowledge of color needs to be acquired since they don’t all behave the same way when ground or mixed...careful chemistry goes into the making of colors, with meticulous testing for permanence. While complicated formulae evolve new colors, those derived from Earth and metal bases are still the most reliable.” In the 1930s, Baumann became interested in puppet theater. He designed and carved his own marionettes and established a little traveling company. From 1943 to 1945, the artist carved an altarpiece for the Episcopal Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe. In 1952, a retrospective exhibition of his prints was mounted at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts. Throughout his prolific career, Baumann executed nearly four hundred color woodcuts. Baumann’s woodcuts...

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER (American 1834–1903 London) THAMES WAREHOUSES, 1859 (K 38 ii/ii; Glascow 46 iv/v; Mansfield 37) Etching and drypoint on fine thin laid paper. Plate: 3 × 8 i...

1972 Screenprint in colors, on German Etching paper, with full margins Sheet: 30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm) Edition of 100 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in pencil, lower margin ...

This exquisite lithograph after Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), titled May Day, originates from the distinguished 1962 folio The Four Seasons: Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth. Published and printed by Art in America Company, Inc., New York, the edition embodies Wyeth’s lyrical study of springtime renewal and human connection to the land. May Day captures a tender seasonal moment—nature reawakening beneath soft light—rendered with Wyeth’s quiet precision and emotional restraint that elevate the ordinary into the timeless. Executed on velin paper, this lithograph measures 17 x 13 inches (43.2 x 33 cm). As issued, it is unsigned and unnumbered, representing the folio’s authentic format. The Four Seasons series was conceived by the editors of Art in America in collaboration with Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, who selected drawings from the artist’s studio and private collection to express the cyclical harmony between nature and spirit. Each image reflects Wyeth’s devotion to atmosphere and the fragile poetry of the passing year. Artwork Details: Artist: After Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Title: May Day, from The Four Seasons, Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth, 1962 Medium: Lithograph on velin paper Dimensions: 17 x 13 inches (43.2 x 33 cm) Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Date: 1962 Publisher: Art in America Company, Inc., New York Printer: Art in America Company, Inc., New York Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium Provenance: From the 1962 folio The Four Seasons, Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth, published and printed by Art in America Company, Inc., New York Notes: Excerpted from the 1962 folio: "In 1962 the editors of Art in America proposed to Wyeth a portfolio of images of his recent dry-brush drawings. The artist and his wife suggested the theme, 'The Four Seasons,' because of the essential role played in his work by the cycle of the seasons. The drawings were selected by Andrew and Betsy Wyeth from works in the house and studio at Chadds Ford, supplemented by some owned by friends. With a few exceptions they had never been exhibited or reproduced. The plates were made directly from the originals. In these drawings Wyeth's loving concentration on the object is fully revealed. But as always in his work, this concern with the tangible is balanced by sensibility to mood, to the emotion arising from the actual. They are pervaded with a sense of the season—the exact time of year, the hour of the day, the quality of the light. To the truth and subtlety with which he captures these intangible factors, these drawings owe their poignant poetry." About the Artist: Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) was an American visual artist and one of the best-known painters of the mid-20th century. Although he considered himself an abstractionist, Wyeth’s work is characterized by a meticulous realism imbued with psychological depth and atmosphere. He often painted the landscapes and people surrounding his homes in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, creating an intimate record of American rural life. The son of the celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth, Andrew trained under his father before developing his own deeply personal visual language inspired by Winslow Homer, Henry David Thoreau, and King Vidor. His wife, Betsy Wyeth, was both his muse and career manager, while his son Jamie Wyeth continued the family’s artistic legacy. Among Wyeth’s best-known works is Christina’s World (1948), housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York—a quintessential image of 20th-century American art. His other notable series include The Helga Pictures and his window studies, each reflecting a profound meditation on solitude, memory, and perception. Wyeth was the first painter to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1980. In 2022, Andrew Wyeth's painting Day Dream sold for USD 23.29 million at Christie’s New York, setting a world record for the artist. Andrew Wyeth lithograph...

Medium: original lithograph. Printed in 1981 for the art revue Derriere le Miroir (issue number 247) and published in Paris by Maeght. Size: 15 x 22 inches (380 x 560 mm). There is a...

This 1986 reproduction presents Nicolas de Staël’s Boats in the Harbour, a composition originally painted in 1955 during the artist’s celebrated Antibes period. In this late body of ...

Côte d'Azur is a lithograph designed by Pablo Picasso in collaboration with Henri Deschamps, depicting a view from Picasso's balcony overlooking the Côte d'Azur. Created in 1962, thi...

Charles Turzak, 'Dancers', 1939, wood engraving, edition 100. Signed, titled, and numbered 72/100 in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white Japan paper, with full marg...

Signed lower right, "Maxon" for John Maxon (American, 20th century) and created circa 1995. Additionally titled, verso, 'White Flower'. Monotype with additional hand-painted detail. ...

This exquisite etching by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Attroupement des paysans (Gathering of the Peasants), originates from the celebrated folio Nicolas Gogol, Les Ames mortes, ...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 14, Image 2" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origin...

Lithograph on vélin Mohawk Superfine Smooth paper. Paper Size: 11.937 x 8.96 inches. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, In Memory of M...

This stunning reproduction of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting titled White Rose with Larkspur No.2 is a captivating piece created for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Published by The Mc...

This first edition lithograph titled Acrobatics comes from Chagall's Lithographs Volume II and is catalogued as Mourlot 401. Printed in 1963 by the prestigious Mourlot Frères atelier...

Stardust by Frank Schott 40 x 40 inches / 102cm x 102cm signed edition of 25 48 x 48 inches / 122cm x 122cm signed edition of 7 archival quality fine art pigment print limited a...

Artist: Cris Cristofaro, American Title: Blue Rectangles Year: 1978 Medium: Screenprint on Arches Paper, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Size: 22 x 30 in. (55.88 x 76.2 cm)

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Cheval bleu au couple (Blue Horse with Couple), originates from the historic 1982 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 250, Hommage a Aime et Marguerite Maeght (Tribute to Aime and Marguerite Maeght). Published by Maeght Editeur, Paris, under the direction of Aime Maeght, and printed by Imprimerie Moderne du Lion, Paris, this vibrant composition reflects Chagall’s lyrical fusion of color, dream, and devotion. In Cheval bleu au couple, ethereal figures and a radiant blue horse float within a luminous space of poetic imagination, evoking love, memory, and transcendence. The image captures the artist’s timeless ability to unite fantasy and emotion within the expressive language of modernism. Executed on velin paper, this lithograph measures 15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.9 cm). As issued, it is unsigned and unnumbered, consistent with the authorized publication format. The edition exemplifies Chagall’s mastery of color lithography and his lifelong exploration of faith, folklore, and the human spirit. Artwork Details: Artist: Marc Chagall (1887–1985) Title: Cheval bleu au couple (Blue Horse with Couple), from Derriere le Miroir, No. 250, Hommage a Aime et Marguerite Maeght (Tribute to Aime and Marguerite Maeght), 1982 Medium: Lithograph on velin paper Dimensions: 15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.9 cm) Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Date: 1982 Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris Printer: Imprimerie Moderne du Lion, Paris Catalogue raisonne references: Chagall, Marc, et al. Chagall Lithographe VI, 1980–1985. Andre Sauret, Editeur, 1986, illustration 993. Cramer, Patrick, and Meret Meyer. Marc Chagall: Catalogue Raisonne Des Livres Illustres. P. Cramer ed., 1995, illustration 113. Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium Provenance: From the 1982 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 250, published by Maeght Editeur, Paris Notes: Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), This special issue of Derriere le Miroir was designed and defined by Aime Maeght in the fall of 1980. He envisioned its publication as a celebration with which artists and writers published since 1946 were to be associated. He also chose Francois Chapon, president of the Reverdy Committee, to write the presentation. This Derriere le Miroir number 250 took the form, after its disappearance on September 5, 1981, of a tribute to Aime Maeght and his wife Marguerite Maeght who died four years earlier. 24 artists agreed to create an original graphic work for this issue which includes the general table of all issues as well as excerpts from texts by 32 writers. Finished printing on June 2, 1982 on the presses of the l'Imprimerie moderne du Lion in Paris. CL examples were printed on velin d'Arches, numbered from I to CL, and some non-commercial examples constituting the original edition. About the Publication: Derriere le Miroir (translated as "Behind the Mirror") was an iconic French art periodical published from 1946 to 1982 by Maeght Editeur, one of the most influential art publishers of the 20th century. Founded by Aime Maeght in Paris, the publication was conceived as a visual and literary collaboration between leading modern artists, poets, and critics. Each issue functioned as both an exhibition catalogue and a work of art in itself—featuring original lithographs printed directly from the artists' stones or plates, alongside essays, poems, and critical commentary. Over the course of 36 years, Derriere le Miroir produced more than 250 issues and showcased an extraordinary roster of artists including Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Fernand Leger, Pierre Bonnard, Alberto Giacometti, Eduardo Chillida, Ellsworth Kelly, Francis Bacon, Paul Rebeyrolle, Claude Garache, Antoni Tapies, Bram van Velde, Pierre Alechinsky, Pol Bury, Shusaku Arakawa, and Gerard Titus-Carmel. Printed in the ateliers of Mourlot, Arte, and Imprimerie Moderne du Lion, the periodical set new standards for quality in color lithography, combining fine art printing with elegant typography and poetic text. Beyond its visual brilliance, Derriere le Miroir also became a cultural chronicle of postwar European modernism. Each issue coincided with exhibitions held at Galerie Maeght, providing a collectible and widely accessible record of groundbreaking shows. Its integration of image, text, and philosophy created a dialogue between art and literature that elevated the modern art book to new aesthetic heights. Today, Derriere le Miroir remains one of the most sought-after and historically significant art publications, prized by collectors and scholars alike for its craftsmanship, influence, and its role in defining the visual language of 20th-century modernism. The Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence continues to honor this legacy through exhibitions and archival preservation of the series, affirming Derriere le Miroir's enduring place in the history of modern art and fine art publishing. About the Artist: Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was a Belarus-born French painter, printmaker, and designer whose visionary use of color and poetic symbolism made him one of the most beloved and influential artists of the 20th century. Rooted in the rich imagery of his Jewish heritage and childhood in Vitebsk, Chagall’s dreamlike compositions fused memory, folklore, faith, and romance with the expressive innovations of modern art. His work evolved alongside and in dialogue with the great modern masters—Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray—artists who, like Chagall, redefined artistic language for a new century. Spanning painting, printmaking, stained glass, ceramics, stage design, and illustration, Chagall’s career reflected both his deep spirituality and his boundless imagination. His works are held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Tate, and the Centre Pompidou. The highest price ever paid for a Marc Chagall artwork is approximately $28.5 million USD, achieved in 2017 at Sotheby’s New York for Les Amoureux (1928). Marc Chagall Cheval bleu au couple, Marc Chagall lithograph, Chagall Derriere le Miroir, Chagall Maeght...

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