?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
JACQUES LIPCHITZ Thesée et le Minotaure.
Etching, aquatint and drypoint, 1943-44. 350x285 mm; 13 7/8x11 1/4 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 44/50 in pencil, lower margin. Ex-collection Henri M. Petiet, Paris, with the ink stamp (Lugt 5031, verso). A superb impression of this large, scarce etching.
According to Joann Moser, in the experimental environment at Atelier 17, New York, Lipchitz (1891-1973) revived a 19th century technique known as liquid ground or spirit ground aquatint in this work. "Rather than using dry rosin dust to create an acid-resistant surface, either rosin or dammar crystals were suspended in alcohol and floated on the surface of the plate. When the alcohol evaporated, the residual resins could be warmed to adhere them to the plate and form an acid-resistant ground. This technique was very difficult to control, but it allowed the artist to achieve some very subtle wash-like effects in his prints" (Moser, Atelier 17, 1977, page 29). This painterly approach to printmaking likely influenced the younger generation of artists working side-by-side with Lipchitz and the other old guard European modernists at Atelier 17 during the 1940s.
