Detail of Damien Hirst’s “In Love – Out of Love,” which sold for $750,000 at Phillips, a new record for the artist.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., will host the exhibition “American Master Prints” through Friday, December 29.
At the center of the exhibition will be important series of images by the artists Mary Cassatt, Man Ray, and Donald Judd.
A dedicated printmaker, Mary Cassatt produced more that two hundred aquatints, etchings, drypoints, and lithographs over a period of thirty years. Her technical accomplishments in aquatint as well as soft-ground etching were put to full use in the series of ten ambitious and complex color prints produced in 1890-91 for her first one-person exhibition at the Paris gallery of Durand-Ruel in 1892.
The series, represented in this exhibition by two of the images in their final states, along with a unique drypoint drawing, was a major undertaking, requiring multiple plates for each image and exacting color printing. If Cassatt had created no other prints, these ten alone would have placed her among the premier printmakers of the nineteenth century.
Considered by many to be among the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitsky) turned to Dadaist methods under the influence of Marcel Duchamp and the New York avant-garde. Adventurous and inventive, he explored a wide range of media including photography, painting, collage, sculpture, and assemblage. Featured in this exhibition is a rare portfolio of ten color pochoirs entitled Revolving Doors. Based on a series of collages created by the artist between 1916 and 1917, this project resulted from his experiments with brightly colored construction paper for his painting, The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows. With precise forms carefully arranged to suggest overlapping, and translucent areas of color suspended in an ambiguous pictorial space, this dynamic series embodies the artist’s willingness to experiment across a variety of graphic mediums in pursuit of his radical vision for the fine arts.
American Master Prints remains on view through Friday, December 29, 2000. Located in a landmark townhouse at 21 East 70th Street, Hirschl & Adler Galleries is open Tuesday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., and Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
