"Poles" Minimalist Abstract Lithograph on Paper by Arnold Mesches

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"Poles" Minimalist Abstract Lithograph on Paper

Bold abstracted lithograph by Arnold Mesches (American, 1923-2016). Negative space is filled in with … Read more "Poles" Minimalist Abstract Lithograph on Paper

Bold abstracted lithograph by Arnold Mesches (American, 1923-2016). Negative space is filled in with dark red, creating a negative effect. The subject is commonplace - telephone poles and wires - but the image is complex, with wires and supports creating a variety of shapes.

Titled "Poles" in the lower left corner.
Numbered "A/P" in the lower center.
Signed and dated "Mesches '69" in the lower right. corner.
Presented in an acrylic shadowbox frame.
Frame size: 30"H x 31.25"W
Paper size: 29.25"H x 30.5"W

Following is an excerpt from The New York Times obituary of Arnold Mesches.

"Arnold Mesches, Artist Who Was Recorded by the F.B.I., Dies at 93"
by William Grimes, November 9, 2016

Arnold Mesches, a socially conscious painter whose political activities were recorded by the F.B.I. for more than 25 years in a thick dossier that he later used for his series “The F.B.I. Files,” died on Saturday at his home in Gainesville, Fla. He was 93.
His death was confirmed by his wife, the novelist Jill Ciment.

Mr. Mesches (pronounced MESH-ees) was a scenic artist in Hollywood when his work for the Communist Party came to the attention of the F.B.I. in 1945. A file the bureau started began filling up quickly the next year, when he dropped his work as a storyboard artist on a Tarzan film and took part in a strike against the studios.

Over the years, agents and informers kept track of Mr. Mesches’s day-to-day activities, reporting to headquarters on matters large and small. If he signed a petition, it went into his file. When he turned in an illustration for Mad magazine, the fact was duly noted. One informant, noting his paint-spattered pants, wrote that Mr. Mesches “dressed like a Communist.”

In 1956 most of his artwork was stolen from his studio, including dozens of paintings and drawings inspired by the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. He strongly suspected that the F.B.I. was behind the break-in.

And so it went until 1972, when the surveillance sputtered to its conclusion.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Mesches obtained his file under the Freedom of Information Act and reaped a bonanza of 760 pages, with classified information ruled over in heavy black lines. They had a certain look, he decided.

“I saw other people’s files and realized they were aesthetically beautiful,” he told The New York Times in 2003. “Kind of like Franz Kline sketches. Those big, black slashes where they block things out.”

Going to work, he cut and pasted 57 of the documents into a series of collaged paintings first exhibited at P.S. 1, the Museum of Modern Art’s satellite museum in Queens, in 2003 and later at several other museums. It was, in a way, a collaborative work — an inspired if unexpected union of opposites.

Biography from Nancy Dustin Moure, "Publications in California Art No. 11 , Index to California Art Exhibited at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1918-1972; 2015 edition:

Born in New York City in 1923, Arnold Mesches (American, 1923-2016) came to Los Angeles in 1943. His commercial art education includes training in advertising design, Art Center School in Los Angeles, five months each at the Jepson Art Institute, and at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He is self-taught as a fine artist.

Of his eighteen one-man exhibits, the most recent are those at the Paul Rivas Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1960 and at the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles in 1964. His major juried shows include the Los Angeles and Vicinity Annuals, the Long Beach State College Drawing Annuals, the Westwood Art Association Annuals, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Library of Congress Print Annuals, the Butler Institute Annual, and was a prize winner in the ACA Gallery competition. He also was represented in Art: USA, 1958.

Mr. Mesches is the winner of numerous awards, purchase prizes, and honorable mentions. His work is included in many prominent collections, both in museums and privately owned. He is currently teaching at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, and privately. He previously taught at Kann Institute of Art, University of Southern California, and the New School of Art.

(Source: September 1964 Laguna Beach Art Association catalog)
“Born in New York City in 1923, Arnold Mesches came to Los Angeles in 1943. His commercial art education includes training in advertising design, Art Center School in Los Angeles, five months each at the Jepson Art Institute, and at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He is self-taught as a fine artist."
Source: Nancy Dustin Moure, "Publications in California Art No. 11 , Index to California Art Exhibited at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1918-1972; 2015 edition" See less