Oct 04, 2018 - Sale 2487

Sale 2487 - Lot 46

Price Realized: $ 27,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979)
Solid as a Rock (My God is Rock).

Linoleum cut on Japan paper, 1958. 1134x305 mm; 38x14 7/8inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. An excellent impression of this large, scarce print.

Charles White printed Solid as a Rock on an individual basis, instead of in an edition, from his home studio - first in Pasadena from 1958-59, and then in Altadena in 1960. The owners of this print, close friends of the artist and his wife, photographed White inking the block while pulling impressions of Solid as a Rock in 1960 (see image below).

Lucinda Gedeon notes that the artist alternately dated some impressions 1956 and 1958. Mark Pascale also describes in his retrospective essay "Graphic Interpreter of the Black People": Charles White as Draftsman and Printmaker how White printed this large block print in his studio home, and was inspired by the examples of Mexican artists in linoleum cut printmaking. Other impressions of this print are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Eb11, Oehler/Alder pl, 75, cat. 58 and p. 45.