Untitled (Poster for Tibor de Nagy)

 

Elaine de Kooning

  1918 - 1989 (biography)

1957  

color serigraph 

20 x 13" image & sheet 

ink signed, running along left edge of sheet 

about 30, rare 

dated following signature 

Acton Stamp of Impulse, No. 51, illus. page 149 

heavy, white wove 

published 

Tibor deNagy gallery 

14919 

SOLD

One of Elaine de Kooning's first original prints, this image is described by David Acton in "The Stamp of Impulse - Abstract Expresionist Prints", Worcester Art Museum, 2001. Illustrated in color on page 149, Acton states, on page 148:

"The artist visited Tiber Press on Third Avenue to collaborate with the printer Floriano Vecchi. She began by inscribing her name on the silk with a brush and lithographic tusche - as well as the gallery name, address and date - and then blocked out these passages with glue, to create textural windows within the image.

Then de Kooning spontaneously sketched a gestural web of interlacing lines onto the screen, reminiscent of crossing tree branches, Vecchi squeeged a layer of glue over the entire image, and when it was dry, he washed out the tusche with a solvent to create a stencil.....Using the same proceedures the collaborators created two supplementary screens to overprint golf and red ink....

To enliven the prints, she used a tongue deprssor to smear ink on wet impressions from the black screen. The effect was different on each print, though she used circular movements to give the design a whirlpool effect, always reserving the text.....

Though this poster was signed and dated as a print, it was used to advertise the show, and many impressions were destroyed. The size of the edition is unknown but seems to have been about thirty impressions."