Tom Wesselmann, Deluxe Hand Signed Edition of Still Life (Oranges & Apples), from 1 Cent Life, 1964

Tom Wesselmann

Deluxe Hand Signed Edition of Still Life (Oranges & Apples), from 1 Cent Life, splayed across two portfolio pages and hand signed lower right hand side.

Deluxe, hand signed edition of only 100 of the legendary 1 Cent Life Portfolio - one of the most important and celebrated artistic collaborations of the 1960s. (The present Deluxe hand signed edition is 100; the regular unsigned edition was 2000) This lithograph was part of the complete portfolio acquired from the estate of Pop Artist Robert Indiana, who also contributed a work to the portfolio. Documented prints from the hand signed edition of 100 rarely appear on the market. This is one of them. The work is pencil signed by Tom Wesselmann on the front.

This work is elegantly framed in a museum quality white wood frame under UV plexiglass.

Measurements

Framed 

22 inches vertical by 27 inches horizontal  by 1.5 inches

Artwork (splayed across two portfolio pages)

15.5 inches vertical by 26.5 inches horizontal

Chinese American artist and writer Walasse Ting, in collaboration with Sam Francis, assembled a group of the most significant Pop and Abstract Expressionist artists in America, including Andy Warhol, along with the European COBRA artists to create the definitive artistic portfolio of lithographs with accompanying text by Walasse Ting. The Deluxe edition, which features hand signed prints, was published in a limited edition of only 100. Of the 100, editions numbered 60-100, or 40 portfolios, were reserved exclusively for Artists & Collaborators.

Signed examples of this portfolio with such superb provenance rarely appear on the marketplace. This is a true collectors item, from the most desirable and influential era in Pop Art history.

Published by E.W. Kornfeld, Germany, Written by Walasse Ting, Edited by Sam Francis

Provenance: Acquired from original, complete 1 Cent Life Portfolio, # 85/100 (Artists & Collaborators) from the Estate and Collection of Robert Indiana, one of the contributors to this portfolio

More about the Signed (Deluxe) Edition of 1 Cent Life portfolio

In 1962, the Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting shared his dream project with painter Sam Francis: to create an anthology of his poetry illustrated by leading artists of their time. Over the next two years, Ting and Francis recruited leading Abstract Expressionists and Pop artists—Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana, James Rosenquist, Mel Ramos, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein, among them, along with the European COBRA artists, like Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and Pierre Alechinsky —to create prints for their collaborative publication, which they playfully titled 1¢ Life. Published in 1964 by E. W. Kornfeld in Switzerland in an edition of 2,000 books, 1¢ Life features 62 color lithographs by a total of 28 iconic artists, including colorful lips by Warhol, abstract splatters by Mitchell, and cartoon girls by Lichtenstein. The accompanying many of these Pop Art prints are the poems of Walasse Ting - racy and avant garde for the early 1960s. The lithography was executed by Maurice Beaudet, of Paris. Complete examples of 1¢ Life can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and many other public and private institutions around the globe. Today, 1 Cent Life is considered one of the best artist's books ever created- coming out of one of the most influential decades in modern art. Most lithographs are printed on two separate pages. This famed portfolio was produced and assembled by Chinese-American-European artist Walasse Ting in conjunction with American artist Sam Francis, Swiss publisher E.W. Kornfeld, and French printer Maurice Beaudet - a truly global endeavor. The portfolio, featuring some of the most recognizable lithographs of the era, was the result of an unprecedented, ambitious international collaboration between American Pop Artists of the Sixties and the European COBRA artists.

the forms and techniques of classical architecture, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and more. Lichtenstein continued to question the role of style, this time in consumer culture, in his 1990s series Interiors (1990–97), which included images of his own works as decorative elements in domestic settings. In his attempt to fully grasp and expose how the forms, materials, and methods of production had shaped the images of Western visual culture, Lichtenstein also explored other mediums such as polychromatic ceramic, aluminum, brass, and serigraphy. He experimented with printmaking as early as the late 1940s and completed several large-scale public sculptures, as well as a number of major murals.

https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2017/02/23/book-corner-1-life/

Tom Wesselmann Biography

Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 23, 1931. He attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before entering the University of Cincinnati. In 1953 his studies were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the army, during which time he began drawing cartoons. He returned to the university in 1954 and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1956; during this time he decided to pursue a career in cartooning and so enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After graduation he moved to New York City, where he was accepted into the Cooper Union and where his focus shifted dramatically to fine art; he received his diploma in 1959.

Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of the classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera in an effort to make images as powerful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his Great American Nude series with their fat forms and intense colors.

In the seventies, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media which had preoccupied him during the Sixties. Most significantly, his large Standing Still Life series, composed of free standing shaped canvases, showed small intimate objects on a grand scale. In 1980 Wesselmann, using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, wrote an autobiography documenting the evolution of his artistic work. He continued exploring shaped canvases (first exhibited in the 1960s) and began creating his first works in metal. He instigated the development of a laser-cutting application, which would allow him to make a faithful translation of his drawings in cut-out metal. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the artist expanding on these themes, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he described as “going back to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959.” He had indeed come full circle. In his final years he returned to the female form in his Sunset Nudes series of oil paintings on canvas, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery, and sanguine moods often recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.

Wesselmann worked in New York City for more than four decades. He lived in New York City with his wife, Claire, daughters Jenny and Kate, and son Lane. He died there on December 17, 2004.