Oct 26, 2011 - Sale 2258

Sale 2258 - Lot 435

Price Realized: $ 1,080
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
ANDRE RACZ
Perseus Beheading Medusa IV.

Engraving, aquatint, etching and embossing, 1945. 547x380 mm; 21 1/2x15 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 21/25 in pencil, lower margin. A brilliant, richly-inked and proof-like impression.

Born and raised in Romania, Andre Racz (1916-1994) moved to the United States as a member of the Romanian Art Commission in connection with New York's World Fair in 1939. In New York Racz studied with Hayter at Atelier 17 and produced many prints, including a number of portfolios throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid 1940s his expressive and shocking imagery was not yet free from the influences of Picasso and Hayter; the slumped over and decapitated head of Medusa, at the feet of the fierce Perseus resonates with the savagery seen in Picasso's work from the previous decade.