GRACE HARTIGAN
The Hero Leaves His Ship II (Hero).
Lithograph on ivory wove German Copperplate paper, 1960. 655x500 mm; 25¾x19¾ inches (sheet), full margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 26. Signed, dated and inscribed "Artist's Proof" in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by ULAE, West Islip. A very good impression of this extremely scarce, early lithograph.Hartigan (1922-2008) was among the foremost female artists of the Abstract Expressionists--along with Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler— and a centerpiece of the lively, bohemian New York school that included her friends Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Franz Kline. She was the only woman artist whose work was included in the MOMA's landmark 1958-59 exhibition The New American Painting which visited eight European countries over the course of a year, showcasing seventeen different American artists and forever changing the way Europeans viewed American art. During the 1960s, she relocated to Baltimore and, from 1965, worked at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she was the director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting. The current work is from a series of four lithographs by Hartigan, based on poems written by the artist's friend Barbara Guest. Sparks 2.