Limited Edition Print – Alan Reid, Untitled, 2015
Alan Reid is an American artist who lives in New York City. Known for his gauzy, colored-pencil representational images of heiresses, bored fashionistas and aquiline beauties that have been called provocatively light, with coloring as delicate as his women are elegant.
This limited edition print takes into context the historical relevance of II Bisonte, the print studio where it was made - and reflects the printers’ illustrious engagement with modern European masters: Moore, Matisse, Picasso. As a result Alain Reid, an artist who is both outside the Modernist tradition and non-European asked himself a question, “what aesthetic language would be available to an American arriving at the print studio in the first half of our century?” and created a print playing within this game.
Putting himself back in time, he took inspiration from mass-produced pochoir covers of Vogue and a hard-to-place artist Ben Shawn. As a result the print includes a zebra, reminiscent of A.E. Marty’s famous Vogue cover. The zebra is rearing up in front of a fire, the flames drawn from a Shawn image. He says ‘somehow to my mind these are emblematic of a moment just before the authority of Modernism began to collapse.’
Selected exhibition history: Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad; Lisa Cooley, New York, where he also co-organized the exhibition ‘Air de Pied-à-terre A Pallazzo, Brescia; Mary Mary, Glasgow; Galerie Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt; Talbot Rice, Edinburgh; Reid is included in the second edition of Phaidon’s “Vitamin D.”
Villa Lena Foundation Print Editions- The Traditional Art of Printmaking with contemporary artists
Each year the Villa Lena Foundation works in collaboration with II Bisonte and a selection of contemporary artists on the Villa Lena residency programme in order to develop and produce a series of limited edition prints. Artists work with expert technicians to explore new techniques and push their practice into exciting and uncharted territory. A number of these unique prints are now available to purchase online.
Il Bisonte is a print-workshop for graphic arts founded in Florence in 1959 by Maria Luigia Guaita. Many artists – both Italian and non – accepted the invitation to work at Il Bisonte. including members of the Futurist movement -Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, Alberto Magnelli, and such international stars as Pablo Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Helen Chadwick, Alexander Calder and Henry Moore. In 1983 Il Bisonte became a non-profit Cultural Centre and opened an international school, with the focus to preserve the teaching and printing of the traditional engraving techniques.
ALL PROCEEDS FROM PRINT SALES WILL GO TOWARDS SUPPORTING THE VILLA LENA FOUNDATION.
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While working on the Elvira print at the historical printmaking studio Il Bisonte, Sylvie Auvray surprised the technicians with the imaginative selection of materials and unconventional methods – rather than using the traditional etching pen on copper plate, she used different liquids in order to create imagery. The result was a large shape in the center of the work reminiscent of a ghostly spirit, so she named the print after Elvira –after the local legend of a young beauty who haunts the woods of Villa Lena.
€700,00
Gently resting on a mattress and wrapped in their bed sheets, Adeline’s “creatures” seem gently kissed by the peeking moonlight, while a grainy grayness invades the darker corners of their “incubedroom”. A window into their quiet intimacy. Adeline De Monseignat’s drawing that inspired this work, is the starting point for an installation that one day will become a reality.
€700,00
Beatrice Boyle limited edition print celebrates the female figure, reduced to a few simple lines, the colour recalls flesh in flat monochrome. Through a series of abstractions, the figure becomes removed from the original life drawings, paintings and sculptures it derived from – it becomes a symbol, a representation of its simplest form.
€500,00
Found materials are often the starting point for Bobby Dowler, debris that he finds in other artists’ studios or unwanted household materials – these remnants inspire him to make shapes and forms which he then glues together to create a painting. This exploration into print was the first time Dowler had worked in the medium; he says ‘I felt compelled to freely draw of my own accord filling up the space of the plate with whatever came into my mind at that moment.’ Marks are swept together and images are created with a freeform energy that moves beyond the restrictions of the paper form.
€500,00
