?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
WILLIAM GROPPER Two lithographs.
Politicos, 1953-56 * Piece Work, 1953-56. Both 356x252 mm; 14x10 inches, full margins. Both signed, titled and numbered 17/50 in pencil, lower margin. Both from Caprichos. Both fine, rich impressions.
As a "subversive" artist, Gropper was called in to testify before the McCarthy committee. His name was displayed on the front pages of the country's newspapers, galleries stopped exhibiting his work and patrons stopped buying it. Intimidation by government agents, threats and more followed. His response to this ordeal was to create a series of 50 lithographs under the title Caprichos, after Goya who he greatly admired. The works were an outlet for his frustrations as well as an indictment of the world which gave rise to McCarthyism. Gropper's sometimes nightmarish imagery unflinchingly depicts the inequalities and hypocrisy of the social order.
