Artwork Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) |
Title |
Two Documentary Impressions from an Aterlier 17 Practice Plate |
Date |
1944 |
Description |
Born in Chicago, the painter and sculptor Reuben Kadish studied art in Los Angeles in the early 1930s, when he met Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock and Pollock's brother Sanford. After his discharge from the United States Army in 1944 he moved to New York City and resumed his friendships with them. While developing as a painter, he worked as an assistant to the printmaker Stanley William Hayter at his experimental workshop, Atelier 17. (See 2015.002.) Kadish encouraged Pollock to make engravings at the workshop and taught him how to use the engraver's burin, a chisel-like tool for cutting into the copper plate. These impressions were pulled from both sides of the two-sided practice plate. In 1990, when Kadish donated them to the Pollock-Krasner House, he wrote the following: "The whole project was initiated with the thought that some editions might bring in enough cash so that the summer could be spent at the Cape [Cape Cod, Mass.]. Jack was very unhappy about the results, so while he admired Miro, Masson and others I was printing at the time he did not see his way clear to approve editioning. Since no other extra cash was around I suggested he and Lee summer with us on Louse Point [in Springs, East Hampton]. So if it had gone the other way, you might not be sitting in this house, reading this letter." Pollock made eleven intaglio plates at Atelier 17, of which only trial proofs and various states were printed. Posthumous editions of six plates, 50 in each edition, were authorized by Lee Kranser and produced in 1967. Gift of Reuben Kadish. |
Catalog Number |
1990.002 |
Object Name |
Engraving |