Falling Man/Perspective Shadow Man Large Serigraph by Ernest Trova

Description

Artist: Ernest Trova – American (1927- 2009 )
Title: Falling Man/ Perspesctive Shadow Man
Year: 1972
Publisher: Pace Editions
Medium: … more Artist: Ernest Trova – American (1927- 2009 )
Title: Falling Man/ Perspesctive Shadow Man
Year: 1972
Publisher: Pace Editions
Medium: Serigraph (silkscreen). 11 colors
Sheet size: 35 x 35 inches.
Unframed
Signature: Signed, dated lower right
Edition: Edition size – 150 plus proofs. This one – 2/2 AP
Condition: Good

This print is immediately recognizable as the work of Ernest Trova. It is from his Falling Man series. The print is in generally good condition, with some small flaws. There is a 3/8” tear in the left margin 8” from the top (see picture). There are several tiny specks of foxing in the image that are visible upon very close inspection in bright light. Please see the pictures, although they are rather difficult to see. There is some foxing in the lower margin. Please see the picture of the signature. There are a few tiny spots of foxing on the reverse. All of the foxing front and back is superficial – it does not go through the paper.


Ernest Tino Trova (February 19, 1927 – March 8, 2009) was a self-trained American surrealist and pop art painter and sculptor. Best known for his signature image and figure series, The Falling Man, Trova considered his entire output a single "work in progress. " Trova used classic American comic character toys in some of his pieces because he admired their surrealism. Many of Trova's sculptures are cast in unusual white bronze. He began as a painter, progressing through three-dimensional constructions to his mature medium, sculpture. Trova's gift of forty of his works led to the opening of St. Louis County, Missouri's Laumeier Sculpture Park.


From the New York Times obituary:

Known for his Falling Man series in abstract figural sculpture, he created hard-edge images that brought him widespread attention because they seem to strike a chord of empathy with viewers who recognized themselves as human beings challenged by a technological society. Also, they are the only creatures aware of their mortality. He is considered highly innovative because of his successful combining of technological methods to create his art.

Interpretation as to overall meanings vary with some thinking that it refers to the fall of man in the religious sense and others seeing it as a commentary on the tragic mechanization of society that reduces human beings. Trova has said that "falling" refers to the fact that man moves from one position to the next in an eventual fall to inevitable oblivion" (Kultermann 11).

He has lived his entire life in St. Louis, Missouri although his reputation is nationwide. He did not think it necessary to study art because he believed in his own instincts, although he drew from a variety of sources including figurative painters such as Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, and Willem DeKooning.

The Falling Man series resulted from a unique offer from the Famous-Barr Department Store in St. Louis, where he had worked as a window decorator in his twenties. Store personnel told him that in exchange for creating a series of works to exhibit at the city's 1964 bicentennial celebration, he could have unlimited access to the store's materials and workers. The store's display department was a great setting for him to be creative with his interest in Pop Art, and this project gave him assembly-line assistance of carpenters, electricians, and painters.

The result was that all images had Falling Man figures, and this included paintings, assemblages, collages, and movable sculpture, both electronic and hand driven. After the Bi-centennial, many of the pieces were then shipped to the Pace Gallery in New York City and received critical acclaim.

Of his technique, he has explained that he first creates a cardboard model and then works from there, often making it life size. He is much more interested in variations of shape and form rather than color.

Ernest Tino Trova died at his home in Richmond Heights, near St. Louis, Missouri on March 8, 2009 at the age of 82. less