Clyfford Still-MoMA Art Card: PH-814, 1951 (Hand Signed by Clyfford Still), 1979

Clyfford Still-MoMA Art Card: PH-814, 1951 (Hand Signed by Clyfford Still), 1979

Incredibly scarce art card hand signed by Clyfford Still.
(The postcard is open edition, but it was uniquely hand signed by the artist)
The legendary, famously reclusive painter Clyfford Still died in 1980 - and this card was signed well before the online and Internet era. The previous owner acquired this signature directly from the artist; we have yet to find any other like this - it's that scarce.
The postcard was published by the Museum of Modern Art, and the painting it depicts is PH-814 (1951-T No. 3) -a large-scale oil on canvas created in 1951, currently housed in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was acquired in 1954 - with funding from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund.
This work has been elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality white wood frame under UV plexiglass.
Measurements:
Framed
11 inches (vertical) by 9.25 inches (horizontal) by 2 inches
Art Card:
6 inches (vertical) by 4 inches (horizontal)

CLYFFORD STILLBIOGRAPHY
Still was among the first generation of Abstract Expressionists who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II. Still’s contemporaries included Grace Hartigan, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Though the styles and approaches of these artists varied considerably, Abstract Expressionism is marked by abstract forms, expressive brushwork, and monumental scale, all of which were used to convey universal themes about creation, life, struggle, and death (“the human condition”).

Described by many as the most anti-traditional of the Abstract Expressionists, Still is credited with laying the groundwork for the movement. Still’s shift from representational painting to abstraction occurred between 1938 and 1942, earlier than his colleagues, who continued to paint in figurative-surrealist styles well into the 1940s.

Born in 1904 in Grandin, North Dakota, Still spent his childhood in Spokane, Washington, and Bow Island in southern Alberta, Canada. Although Abstract Expressionism is identified as a New York movement, Still created his formative works during various teaching posts on the West Coast, first in Washington State and later in San Francisco.

He also taught in Virginia in the early 1940s.

Still visited New York for extended stays in the late 1940s and became associated with the two galleries that launched this new American art to the world: the Art of This Century and Betty Parsons galleries. He lived in New York for most of the 1950s, during the height of the Abstract Expressionism movement.

He became increasingly critical of the art world during this time. In the early 1950s, Still severed ties with commercial galleries and in 1961 moved to Maryland, removing himself further from the art establishment.

In 1979, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the largest survey of Still’s art to date and the largest presentation afforded by the institution to the work of a living artist. Following his death, all works that had not entered the public domain were sealed off from both public and scholarly view, closing off access to one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century.
Still remained in Maryland with his second wife, Patricia, until his death in 1980.