Winter Garden

 

Leonard Edmondson

  1916 - 2002 (biography)

1957  

mixed technique color intaglio 

11 1/8 x 7 13/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

42 of 50  

pencil titled and dated in lower margin 

 

ivory wove with ram skull watermark 

published 

artist 

GAJA103 

$1,800.00 

Launching his distinctive style from abstract surrealism of Paul Klee and the expressionism of Hans Hofmann, Los Angeles artist Leonard Edmondson's aesthetic imagery invokes ‘almost remembered' forms, feelings and spaces in his paintings, watercolors, etchings and screenprints. In his essay on Leonard Edmondson found on page 200 in A Spectrum of Innovation Color in American Printmaking 1890-1860, David Acton offered the following praise: “Technical virtuosity and originality are characteristic of Edmondson’s etched oeuvre. The artist has acknowledged that landscapes seen from an aerial view were the initial inspiration for his intaglio prints. Onto this topography, however, he superimposed a rich variety of forms and figures, which he perhaps developed from his experience as a calligrapher.... Edmondson’s prints always present rich and fascinating surfaces. Their great variety of textural effects, achieved by soft-ground etching and aquatint, are quite astonishing on close examination….By repetition and refinement, Edmondson developed his printing techniques to a virtuosic level. The majority of his color intaglios were made from one plate, with all the colors layered onto the plate and printed in a single operation….Between about 1955 and 1959, Edmondson experimented with the use of a second soft-ground or aquatint plate, with which he added an overall scrim of tone and pattern to the image.” A California native, Leonard Edmondson was born in Sacramento in 1916. His college studies began at the Los Angeles City College and continued at the University of California at Berkeley where he graduated in 1942 after earning his B.A. and M.A. in Fine Art. Between 1942 and 1946, Edmondson served in the U.S. Army in Military Intelligence. During these years, he traveled through Europe where he saw a body of work by Paul Klee. Immediately after the war, he explored the collections of the Louvre.