This is a 12 by 8 inch woodcut entitled "Signboard" done in 1964 by listed New Jersey artist William Gorman. It is number 17 on 35. The signboard is in a field with an old house in the distance. It is in excellent condition. With the mat is measures 18 by 14 inches. It comes with a protective plastic covering. The photos tell the story. William Gorman lived from 1925 to 2005, spending most of his life in Jersey City and then Bayonne,N.J. He was primarily a realist but there are definite elements of cubism, abstraction and certainly modernism in most of his work. He is in numerous museums including the Butler Institute, the Newark Museum, the Jersey City Museum, the National Academy, the Springfield Missouri Museum, the Canton Art Institute,George Washington Carver Museum ,the U.S. Department of State, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Norfolk Museum of Arts & Sciences. He was featured in the October,1970 American Artist magazine in an article written by Henry Gasser. He was an N.A.(1994) and was a member of Allied Artists of America, the N.J. Water Color Society, the Philadelphia Water Color Club and the National Society of Painters in Casein.
The artist in his own words spoke of his work in the 1964 issue of "Prize-Winning Watercolors" in which one of his paintings was featured:
" The recurrent theme of my work is the interpretation and recording of the passage of time in its relationship to man and the evidence of his being. This I try to communicate by depicting man and his structures...old houses, buildings, signboards, deserted motion picture theaters, amusement parks, bridges, storefronts... all the aspects of the city monuments erected by man for man.
Being born and reared in the city, my work naturally reflects and is motivated by my particular environment. The destruction in the so-called name of progress of these old and memory-laden structures causes me a sense of sadness and regret, a nostalgia for the passing of a by-gone era.
If a particular emphasis seems to be placed on theme and subject, this is intentional, For my purposes , the subject and its mood are the first consideration.Everything else is subordinated to the feeling of the subject."