Joan Mir, Composition (Cramer 1080), San Lazzaro Et Ses Amis, Xxe Sicle, Lithograph

Condition: Pre-Owned
Lithograph on vlin d'Arches paper. Paper size: 14 x 10.5 inches. Excellent condition. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, XXe San Lazzaro et ses Amis, San Lazzaro et ses amis, hommage au fondateur de la revue XXe sicle, 1975. Published by Socit Internationale d'Art XXe sicle, Paris; printed by Mourlot Frres, October, 1975. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), Finished printing in Paris in October, 1975, this book has been printed on vlin d'Arches in DLXXV numbered examples. The LXXV original examples include a series of VIII original lithographs, signed and numbered by the artists. In addition, LV examples were printed for artists, authors, friends and collaborators of the 20th century. The typography is from l'Imprimerie Union in Paris, the lithographs of Max Bill, Marc Chagall, Hans Hartung, Braque, Fontana, Magnelli, Picasso, Magritte and Poliakoff were printed by Fernand Mourlot in Paris; those of Alexander Calder and Joan Mir by l'imprimerie Arte in Paris; that of Max Ernst by Pierre Chave in Vence; that of Zao Wou-ki by ateliers Bellini in Paris; and that of Henry Moore by the Curwen Studio in London. Excerpted from the academic article, Promoting Original Prints, The Role of Gualtieri di San Lazzaro and XXe Sicle by Valerie Holman, published in PRINT QUARTERLY, XXXIII, 2016, 2, Until recently very little has been written on the Italian author and art publisher Gualtieri di San Lazzaro (1904-75), yet for 50 years he chronicled the life and work of contemporary artists, produced monographs of exceptional quality, and disseminated original prints by modern painters and sculptors through his best-known periodical, XXe Sicle. Although still a relatively unfamiliar figure in the United Kingdom, San Lazzaro is one of the half-dozen great art publishers of the mid-twentieth century who, together with his exemplar, Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939), and those of his own generation, Christian Zervos (1889-1970), Triade (1889-1983) and Albert Skira (1904-73), chose to base himself in Paris, seeing it throughout his life as the centre of the art world.XXe Sicle, an illustrated periodical, was launched in 1938 and printed in editions of approximately 2,000, each issue containing both photographs and four-colour separation reproductions across a wide spectrum of visual imagery ranging from masterpieces of Western painting to popular prints from the Far East. Its large format, lively design, and close integration of text and image, were immediately striking, but its most innovative feature, introduced at the suggestion of Hans Arp (1886-1966), was the inclusion of original prints by contemporary artists in every issue. With obvious appeal for collectors, XXe Sicle was also designed to introduce a wider, international public to contemporary painting and sculpture through good quality colour reproductions and the immediacy of original prints. Comparable in price to Cahiers d'Art, early issues of XXe Sicle sold out rapidly. While San Lazzaro's own aesthetic preferences tended towards lyric abstraction, he made clear that XXe Sicle was non-partisan [publication ceased during World War II].in 1951, San Lazzaro relaunched XXe Sicle with thematic issues that were materials based, or centred on a topic of current interest in the visual arts, particularly in Europe: concepts of space, matter, monochrome, mark-making and the sign.' A defining feature of the new series was Italy's artistic dialogue with France for, while San Laz-zaro had originally concentrated on Paris-based painters and sculptors, his aim was to create an international network, to make known the work of French artists in Italy and Italian artists in France, and subsequently extend this bilateral axis to the English-speak-ing world. The artists represented in No. I by an original print were all best known as sculptors: Arp, Laurens, Henry Moore (1898-186) and Marino Marini, San Lazzaro not only sought to show readers the full range of an artist's work, but to encourage the production of prints, a stimulus much appreciated, for example, by Magnelli. Suffering from failing health, in 1968 San Lazzaro lost overall control of XXe Sicle to Lon Amiel, a printer-publisher who had provided financial backing and helped with distribution in America." Thematic issues now ceased and were replaced by a 'panorama' of the year, but San Lazzaro was still active as a publisher of books and albums of prints.Shortly after his death, San Lazzaro himself was the subject of two exhibitions: 'Omaggio a XXe Sicle' in Milan in December 1974 centred on graphic work by those artists closest to him late in life, while 'San Laz-zaro et ses Amis' at the Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1975 featured work by all those whose work he had promoted for more than 50 years: Arp, Calder (1898-1976), Capogrossi, Chagall, Sonia Delau-nay, Dubuffet, Estve, Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Gili-oli (1911-77), Magnelli, Marini, Mir, Moore and Poliakoff. This exhibition was seen by one of his closest colleagues as an indirect portrait of San Lazzaro, a complex man whose modesty and reserve masked his unremitting drive to extend international appreciation of contemporary art, and to bring the reading public closer to its making through the medium of print.

HANS HARTUNG (1904-1989) was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the Legion d'honneur. Hartung's freewheeling abstract paintings set influential precedents for many younger American painters of the 1960s, making him an important forerunner of American Lyrical Abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s. He was featured in the 1963 film documentary School of Paris: (5 Artists at Work) by American filmmaker Warren Forma.
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