Philip Pearlstein Artist Proof Girl on an Orange and Black Mexican Rug 1973

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Philip Pearlstein (1924 - 2022) was active/lived in New York. Philip Pearlstein is known for Realist nude figure painting, interiors … Read more Philip Pearlstein (1924 - 2022) was active/lived in New York. Philip Pearlstein is known for Realist nude figure painting, interiors and townscape.

Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1924. He grew up in Pittsburgh and in 1944 enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He spent three years in the Army and then returned to Carnegie, graduating in 1949 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He pursued graduate studies in art history at New York University and received a Masters Degree there in 1956.

He rapidly became involved with the dominant orthodoxy of Abstract Expressionism. But in 1958, after a visit to Italy, he began to realize that he was still at bottom a realist draftsman. He painted with a kind of weighty probity that Courbet would have approved. He tried painting landscapes but kept coming back to the female figure. Nothing is fudged or romanticized, all the attention is focused on an absolute truth of contour, the precise sensation of bunched, knotted or slack muscle, the interplay between the cold skin and the patterns of fabric.

This is an artist printing proof of a 1973 lithograph produced in a limited edition of 100. The artist's proof is outside of the numbered edition. It is a prototype for which the artist approves of the work for the printing and is much rarer than the numbered prints. Only one or a very few are produced, and often are not even offered for sale.

Excellent condition, framed in a 31" x 40" thin black metal molding under glass. Signed and marked printing proof in pencil, lower left. See less