Sketches for Marat

 

Harold Persico Paris

  1925 - 1979 (biography)

1965 /1966 

lithograph 

26 1/2 x 39" image 

pencil signed, lower right 

trial proof from outside the regular edition of 20 

pencil dedicated "To Ron Chamberlain", lower left; pencil editioned as T/P (trial proof) 

1968 Brooklyn Museum Sixteenth National Print Exhibition checklist; Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, accession no. X.1993.70 

antique white Rives watermarked wove 

published 

artist 

12323 

$1,500.00 

Harold Paris pays homage to Parisian political theorist, writer, and physician Jean-Paul Marat (1743 - 1793) in this gestural Modernist lithograph. The imagery consists of a series of 15 vignettes, possibly "sketched" for an intended series that was never realized. During this period Paris was teaching, working on his ceramics and sculpture and many other projects.

"Sketches for Marat" was exhibited on February 9, 1965 at the Hansen Gallery in San Francisco, while the University of California at Berkeley lists this print as printed in 1966. The discrepancy in dates may simply be because Paris continued to work on the image for several months or years. Either way, this large-format work is a significant marker in Paris' exploration of style and medium, departing from religious iconography into the nearly non-objective, opting in this case for movement and contrast on the stone.

An impression of "Sketches for Marat" was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum's Sixteenth National Print Exhibition / Two Decades of American Prints, 1946-1968 in 1968.