artnet Auctions Presents Important Post-War Prints
New York / Berlin (PRWEB) July 23, 2014 -- artnet Auctions is proud to present Important Post-War Prints, a sale dedicated to editioned work by the most prominent artists of the mid-to-late 20th century. Through their work, Post-War artists responded to the perceived bleakness and disenchantment that went along with rapid social change, resulting largely from the turmoil and upheaval of the Second World War and its aftermath. Prints by Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Philip Guston, Richard Prince, Jasper Johns, Wallace Berman, Jim Dine, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Barbara Kruger, and William Kentridge will be featured in the sale, with estimates ranging from US$1,500 to 95,000.
Among the sale’s highlights is Bruce Nauman’s important and early print Raw-War from 1971 (estimated at US$12,000 to 18,000). This print, which rarely comes to auction, is the artist’s first text-based print, and was published at the height of the Vietnam War. As a politically-charged work, it is among the artist’s most visceral reactions to conflict, explored through the implications of the word “war” as a palindrome. Another important and more recent work, Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Belief + Doubt = Sanity), explores themes of struggle, power, and control in a jarring palette (estimated at US$85,000 to 95,000). The juxtaposition between text and image compels the viewer to confront their own perceptions of desire, sexism, and consumerism.
Other notable prints in the sale are Philip Guston’s Room (estimated at US$6,000 to 8,000) and Group (estimated at US$3,000 to 5,000), each created in the final months of the artist’s life, and which display his return to figuration and drawing. Also figurative in nature, Jim Dine’s Ten Winter Tools (estimated at US$20,000 to 30,000), executed with hand-coloring in 1973, transforms simple, iron-wrought tools into objects to be studied and revered; this complete set comes from the rare and small edition of 10.
Other important Post-War works include several prints by Ed Ruscha, which display his mastery of text as subject. In OOO (estimated at US$7,000 to 10,000), Ruscha employs the trompe-l'oeil technique in a beautiful aqua blue, and in I’m Amazed (estimated at $4,000 to 6,000), the titular text is obscured by a swarm of flies. Even works by generational greats like Wallace Berman, a central figure in the development of Post-War Los Angeles in the 1960s, will be on the auction block. Radio/Aether Series, the complete set of 13 offset lithographs, was photographed from a Verifax collage, and depicts a right hand holding an AM/FM transistor radio (estimated at US$8,000 to 12,000).
Important Post-War Prints is live on artnet Auctions from July 22 to 31, 2014, and is on view at http://www.artnet.com/auctions/search/?q=keyword-rawwar_2014-category-all-artworks-active-auctions-only/&utm_campaign=pressrelease&utm_source=72214postwar&utm_medium=link.
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For more information about this sale, please contact artnet Auctions specialists:
Conner Williams
Specialist, Contemporary Art, Prints & Multiples
+1-212-497-9700 ext. 595
cwilliams(at)artnet(dot)com
Elizabeth Masella
Associate, Prints & Multiples
+1-212-497-9700 ext. 163
emasella(at)artnet(dot)com
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Rita Salpietro, artnet, http://www.artnet.com, +1 (212) 497-9700 Ext: 198, [email protected]
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