Apr 05, 2018 - Sale 2472

Sale 2472 - Lot 47

Price Realized: $ 1,430
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
CALVIN BURNETT (1921 - 2007)
Chair.

Lithograph on Japan paper, 1956. 610x330 mm; 24x13 inches, full margins. Signed, dated and titled in pencil, lower margin.

This very scarce, experimental print depicts the electrical chair execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 - the married couple convicted of espionage in one of the most controversial cases of the McCarthyist era. In the early 1950s, Calvin Burnett is best known for his screenprints which he studied with Lawrence Kupfermann at the Massachusetts College of Art in the early 1950s. In 1956, Burnett began teaching at Mass Art where he would work for 33 years. His Vote Victim and Three Crippled Drunks, both screenprints from 1956, are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.