Untitled (Hungry Ghosts II)

Lee Mullican

In 1964 Lee Mullican did a series of lithographs at Tamarind which evolved into 2 portfolios, "Fables", a suite of 12 lithographs, including a colophon and title page, and "Hungry Ghosts" also a suite of 12 lithographs, also including a colophon and title page.

This image is number two (II) from "Hungry Ghosts" and is the "bon a Tirer", the impression used to measure all the impressions from the edition against.

This work was printed with the Tamarind Master Printer Kenneth Tyler. The Tamarind printing record shows an edition of 20 plus the usual 9 Tamarind Impressions, a BAT (this impression), 1 Artist's Proof, 1 Trial Proof and 1 Cancellation Proof, for a total edition of 33 impressions. The blindstamps of both Tamarind and Kenneth Tyler are in the lower corners.

Beginning with his participation in the influential Dynaton group in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1950s, with Surrealists Gordon Onslow Ford and Wolfgang Paalen, Lee Mullican played an important role in the art communities of both Northern and Southern California. Mullican was singled out by the San Francisco Museum of Art for one-man shows and for the celebrated Dynaton exhibition of 1951. When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented the exhibition Dynaton Revisited in 1977, it called the Dynaton movement "a Bay Area alternative to the New York School of 1950."