Salvador Dali a Port Lligat by Germaine Marguerite de Coster

Salvador Dali a Port Lligat by Germaine Marguerite de Coster

Salvador Dali a Port Lligat

Germaine Marguerite de Coster

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.
Title

Salvador Dali a Port Lligat

 
Artist
Year
1956  
Technique
burin engraving 
Image Size
7 1/4 x 12 15/16" platemark 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
XXVII/CX (27/110) 
Annotations
pencil titled and editioned 
Reference
 
Paper
ivory BFK Rives wove 
State
published 
Publisher
 
Inventory ID
TOPE140 
Price
$800.00 
Description

Germaine de Coster had been a printmaker and book designer for over four decades when she created this engraving of Salvador Dali's home in Port Lligat, Spain. Her sharp, stylized linework illustrates her ongoing pursuit of the Art Deco-era Precisionism genre, a style that established her place in the contemporary design world. De Coster was also known for her traditional Japanese-style ink drawings and more Impressionist landscapes, but her images of architecture and maritime engravings remain among her most recognized art works.

Salvador Dali's famous dwelling on the Costa Brava, situated on the coast of Catalonia, Spain, was originally an unassuming fishermans hut, transformed by Dali and his longtime muse Gala in the 1930s and late 1940s into a labrynthine mansion that surrounds the "Salo de l'Ossa" - 'the Hall of the Bear'. It is now a museum and tourist destination. Here, de Costa depicts it in a series of sharp, almost Cubist angles juxtaposed against the hills of coastal Catalonia and the Mediterranean Sea.

Painter, printmaker, and bookbinder and designer Germaine Marguerite de Coster was born in Paris, France, on September 1, 1895, into a family of Flemish engineers. A gifted artist from an early age, she began her formal art studies in 1912 at the National School of Decorative Arts. There she studied engraving under Charles Genuys and Paul Follot, and Japanese woodblock techniques under Jules Chadel and Yoshijiro Urushibara. Though she focused primarily on graphic arts, she also pursued textile design, which led to an internship at the set design workshop of Theatre du Vieux-Colombier under Jacques Copeau and Louis Jouvet.

In the early 1920s de Coster discovered bookbinding and design, which would become one of her primary pursuits as both an artist and a teacher. She collaborated with other artists and bookbinders such as Helene Dumas to create artbooks with elaborately tooled and stamped leather binding. Later, she would also illustrate several artbooks with her painterly woodcuts and angular, abstracted engravings. In 1921 de Coster began a long and impactful teaching career, first as professor of decorative arts in the vocational schools of Paris, and then in 1931 at the Technical College of Applied Arts on Rue Duperre.

De Coster joined the Society of Decorative Artists in 1936, where she met famed bookbinder Baul Bonet who regularly included her work in the Society's salons; she later served as secretary and then as vice president. She was a member of and exhibitor with the Society of Original Bookbinding and the Society of Artists and Bibliophiles. Her reputation as a leading book designer led to international participation in artbook exhibitions.

De Coster's work as an educator garnered her a plaque of recognition from the Society for the Encouragement of Art and Industry, where she would later establish the Art Information Center. In 1946 she was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor, and in 1951 she was awarded the grand prize from the Original Bookbinding Society.

Germaine Marguerite de Coster died in Paris on November 12, 1992.

 

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.