Jim Dine The Robert Fraser Gallery print, 1965

Jim Dine

The Robert Fraser Gallery London print, 1965

Lithograph and silkscreen. Hand Signed. Numbered. Unframed.

This cool Jim Dine lithograph was published on the occasion of his historic London exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery in June 1965. It hand signed and numbered by the artist from the limited edition of 100 - apart from the poster edition which was unsigned. In late 1966, after showing Dine’s works, the Fraser Gallery was served a summons under an antiquated vagrancy law that prohibited the public display of “obscene” material. As a statement issued by the gallery at that time indicated, 21 of Dine’s drawings, “some of them showing various parts of the human body, were seized by the police,” along with copies of the exhibition’s catalog. A court later ruled the exhibition, but not the confiscated artworks, to have been indecent, and charged Fraser a fine. A 2015 article in Hyperallergic recounts how Robert Fraser, referring to the British government’s heavy-handedness, sent a telegram to Dine in the U.S. It stated, “REGINA VERSUS VAGINA. LOVE, ROBERT.”

Eton-educated Robert Fraser - known as "Groovy Bob" (the title of a later biography on him) was the son of a wealthy financier (his father was a trustee of the Tate Gallery) who set his son up as a gallerist in the heart of London. Fraser would become known as one of the top dealers and promoters of Pop Art in London during the Swinging Sixties - a term coined Time Magazine in 1966. His hip gallery (and parties) were frequented by luminaries like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, and Paul and Linda McCartney; John and Yoko; Francis Bacon, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat; the British Pop artists Peter Blake, Jann Haworth, Clive Barker, Richard Hamilton, and Eduardo Paolozzi - along with many wealthy collectors, socialites and trendsetters. The Robert Fraser Gallery became a focal point for modern art in Britain, and through his exhibitions he helped to launch and promote the work of many important new British and American artists including Peter Blake, Clive Barker, Bridget Riley, Jann Haworth, Richard Hamilton, Gilbert and George, Brian Clarke, Eduardo Paolozzi, Andy Warhol, Harold Cohen, Jim Dine and Ed Ruscha. Long after Fraser's death, PACE Gallery organized a homage to "Groovy Bob", and decades later, his influence in the worlds of art and music has been more fully appreciated.

It's very rare to find an edition of this historic print in such fine condition.

SIGNATURE

Hand signed and numbered 75/100 by Jim Dine lower right front. 

JIM DINE BIOGRAPHY
Jim Dine was born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at night at the Art Academy of Cincinnati during his senior year of high school and then attended the University of Cincinnati, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Ohio University, Athens, from which he received his BFA in 1957. Dine moved to New York in 1959 and soon became a pioneer of the Happenings movement together with Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Whitman. He exhibited at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1958 and 1959, and his first solo show took place at the Reuben Gallery, New York, in 1960.

Dine is closely associated with the development of Pop art in the early 1960s. Frequently he affixed everyday objects, such as tools, rope, shoes, articles of clothing, and even a bathroom sink, to his canvases. Characteristically, these objects were Dine’s personal possessions. This autobiographical content was evident in Dine’s early Crash series of 1959–60 and appeared as well in subsequent recurrent themes and images, such as the Palettes, Hearts, and bathrobe Self-Portraits. He later added gates, trees, and Venus to his repertoire of recurring motifs. Dine has also made a number of three-dimensional works and environments, and is well known for his drawings and prints. He has written and illustrated several books of poetry.

In 1965, Dine was a guest lecturer at Yale University, New Haven, and artist-in-residence at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. He was a visiting critic at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1966. From 1967 to 1971, he and his family lived in London. Dine has been given solo shows in museums in Europe and the United States. In 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized a major retrospective of his work, and in 1978 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented a retrospective of his etchings. Since then, Dine has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1984–85), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1999), and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2004). Dine lives in New York, Paris, and Walla Walla, Washington.
-Courtesy Guggenheim Museum