Ad Reinhardt 10 Screenprints.

Lot description

AD REINHARDT 10 Screenprints. Complete set of 10 color screenprints on cream wove paper, with printed title page, justification page, cover and each screenprint with individually printed number folder, 1966. 555x430 mm; 22x17 inches (sheets), full margins. One of the first 20 deluxe signed sets, from the total edition of 250. Numbered "9" in ink, on the justification page. Each color screenprint signed and numbered 9/250 in pencil, lower left. Printed by Sirocco Screenprints, Inc., New Haven. Published by Ives-Sillman, Inc., New Haven, with the blind stamp on each sheet, for the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, under the direction of Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr., Curator of Paintings. Very good impressions. According to the prospectus issued by the Wadsworth Atheneum announcing the publication of these screenprints, from the edition of 250 numbered copies, the first 20 are signed by the artist. Copies numbered 1 through 20, in which all the prints are signed, was offered for sale by the museum at $250, and copies numbered 21 through 250, unsigned, were offered at $85 (a copy of the prospectus accompanies the current lot). Reinhardt (1913-1967) only produced prints towards the end of his career, and then only minimally, preferring painting instead. He did not make his first print until 1964, when he contributed a color screenprint to the group portfolio, Ten Works by Ten Painters, also published by the Wadsworth Atheneum. According to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which has in its collection another set of the 10 Screenprints, "Reinhardt was, along with Josef Albers, one of the early members of the Abstract American Artists group (AAA). Founded in 1937 and based in New York, the AAA was a diverse group of artists involved in various forms of abstraction--biomorphic, geometric, and cubistic. Like many of his fellow AAA members, Reinhardt particularly admired the non-objective work of Piet Mondrian and in the 1940s developed his own style of bold abstraction based on Mondrian's which he termed 'late classical-mannerist-post-cubist-geometric.' This evolved into painted compositions that always included symmetrical, rectangular shapes in single colors. Late in his career, Reinhardt eliminated all colors from his compositions, with the exception of red and blue. The prints in 10 Screenprints, designed a year before Reinhardt's death, allude to this period, although by 1966 he had purged color from his work, arriving at the all-black compositions for which he is best known."