Raphael Soyer, "Adolescents", Lithograph, from "Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness", Signed/N 1971

Raphael Soyer

ADOLESCENTS (from Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness) , 1971

ADOLESCENTS, 1971  is a five-color lithograph proofed by hand and pulled by machine from one stone and four zinc plates on Arches paper at the Shorewood-Bank Street Atelier, New York.  It measures 18 inches by 24 inches. It has desirable deckled edges, so it can be elegantly floated and framed. It is in excellent condition, and bears the distinctive blindstamp of the printer. (BSA). This work was published by David Godine for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

This marvelous vintage from the early Seventies was created for the legendary portfolio "CONSPIRACY: the Artist as Witness", to raise money for the legal defense of the Chicago 8 - a group of anti-Vietnam War activists indicted by President Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell for conspiring to riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. (1968 was also the year Bobby Kennedy was killed and American casualties in Vietnam exceeded 30,000.) The eight demonstrators included Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. (The eighth activist, Bobby Seale, was severed from the case and sentenced to four years for contempt after being handcuffed, shackled to a chair and gagged.) Although Abbie Hoffman would later joke that these radicals couldn't even agree on lunch, the jury convicted them of conspiracy, with one juror proclaiming the demonstrators "should have been shot down by the police." All of the convictions were ultimately overturned by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. This lithograph has superb provenance: it comes directly from the original Portfolio: "Conspiracy The Artist as Witness" # 23/150, which also featured works by Alexander Calder, Jack Beal, Romare Bearden Leon Golub-Nancy Spero, Claes Oldenburg, Larry Poons, Peter Saul, Robert Morris Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt as well as this one by Raphael Soyer. It was housed in an elegant cloth case, accompanied by a colophon page. This is the first time since 1971 that this important lithograph has been removed from the original portfolio case for sale. It is becoming increasingly scarce because so many from this edition are in the permanent collections of major museums and institutions worldwide.

Russian-born American scene painter Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), is known for his works of Social Realism, portraying office workers and the unemployed of New York City during the Great Depression. Whether in urban environments or interior scenes, Soyer strove to paint people in their natural context, depicting their lives in the context of the times in which they belonged. He would paint his friends with an introspective edge, dissociating them from others in the composition to reflect the hardness of the city they lived in. In turn, Soyer would work to tease out the hidden beauty within his art, presenting subjects in an honest and unfeigned portrayal. His work incorporates a restrained yet eloquent color harmony, similar to the paintings of Edgar Degas and Gustav Courbet, two artists which greatly influenced Soyer’s art.

In a statement for the Portfolio Colophon page, Soyer writes: "I was born December 25, 1989. Came to U.S.A. at age 12. Spent most of my life in New York, studied and did most of my paintings in New York except for some landscapes in Massachusetts and Maine. Traveled to Europe several times mainly to visit te museums and to study old and modern masters."  A major retrospective of Soyer's work was first held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1967, and there have since been many retrospectives worldwide of his work.