Jun 14, 2012 - Sale 2281

Sale 2281 - Lot 202

Price Realized: $ 5,040
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
JACKSON POLLOCK
Untitled.

Screenprint on Strathmore paper, 1951 (printed 1964). 415x590 mm; 16 3/8x23 1/4 inches, full margins. Numbered 28/50 in pencil, lower right. With the Pollock Estate blind stamp, lower left. A very good impression.

Betty Parsons, who owned and operated a gallery on East 57th Street in Manhattan, exhibited many of Pollock's early works. To coincide with his fifth solo show in 1951, which feautred his Black Paintings (see the poster for exhibition, lot 200), Pollock reproduced designs 6 of the paintings in screenprint (see also lot 201). He completed these himself, a process that he learned from his friend Joseph Meert who helped him find a job at Creative Printmakers, Inc., a commercial silkscreen shop.

Pollock became proficient in screenprinting, having made several experimental prints, but few prints were even executed by Pollock himself given the amount of labor and the measured creative approach required for the technique. This series of screenprints, after an intended edition of 25 signed and numbered by Pollock, was ultimately printed and published posthumously in an edition of 50 by the artist's estate. O'Connor/Thaw 1096.