PAT DILLARD (AMERICAN) SIGNED/FRAMED MODERNIST COLOR WOODBLOCK FISHERMEN'S DOCK
(Circa 1954-1962)
Mid-20th c American figurative printmaking
DIMENSIONS:
Frame: 18" Width x 21" Height
Image: 11 ½" Width x 13 ¾" Height
DESCRIPTION:
Pat Dillard (American) was a female American figurative Modernist artist who lived and worked in New York City for most of her adult, artistic life. Her woodblock prints of working Americans in and around NYC were well known at the time when she was most active in the 1950's and 1960's. This is a five color woodblock print pass, involving cobalt blue light, a creamy violet, dark grey, light grey and a light pastel blue-violet. There's no white ink used and almost no area of the woodblock print which doesn't have applied color. The light creamy violet seems to serve as the base color instead of the paper's white, over which the black ink and other color inks are applied in successive pressings of the carved template on the artist's paper. The color woodblock print comes in its original black enamel painted wooden frame and original mat board, somewhat stained by exposure to moisture at some point, which fortunately did not significantly harm the woodblock's pictorial field, less one minor blemish toward the bottom. Portions of the exposed mat underlayment exhibits evidence of moisture as well and now has darker stains in these areas. Fortunately, the damage appears to have been contained and limited to the surrounding mat board and paper underlayment. A very handsome and compelling Modernist figurative color woodblock print by New York City artist Pat Dillard. Gorgeous.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The largely figurative 'Humanist' school (also of New York City) was the deliberate artistic and intellectual response to the revolutionary tenets of 'high abstraction' and the New York school (espousing pure abstraction and displacing Paris as the new epicenter of the international art world.) This was the artistic counter-movement, or 'counter-revolution' if you will, often referred to as the 'Humanist School,' of figurative Modernist artists, more interested in the human theater, humanities' social and economic plight and condition and representing ordinary people at work and play, than the ruling aesthetic at the time, that of the non-representational New York high Modernist school of pure abstraction, which was artistically and conceptually interested more in formal artistic issues, rather than issues not plastically and directly associated with their works. The two sides fought side by side during the Modernist period, somewhat peacefully co-existed and of course, the marketplace subsequently has separated the two artistic camps into those which now garner exorbitant prices at auction and contemporary Modernist figurative works, which still to this day, garner much more modest numbers at auction. Changing tastes and the verdict of history still has to weigh in with its impartial and 'blind' verdict towards the merits and value of both artistic Modernist schools. Pat Dillard, the artist featured, clearly was committed to the 'Humanist' school of figuration, also practiced by many of her New York City contemporaries.
CONDITION:
Good to Very Good overall vintage condition.