MARIO AVATI Hand Colored Mezzotint on BFK Rives Wove Paper RARE Blue Violin 1982

Description: Artist: MARIO AVATI (Italian, 1921–2009) Title: "L'Apres-Medi de ka Tortue" / The Turtle's Afternoon (titled by the artist in pencil, as shown) alternative title "The Blue Violin"Date Created: 1982Medium: Original Color Mezzotint on BFK Rives Wove Paper, with additional hand-coloring by the ArtistSignature: Hand Signed by the Artist in Pencil, as shownEdition: Limited Edition; this one numbered "40/85" in pencil by the artist, as shownSize: 19 x 15 inches (paper)Printer: Atelier Rigal in Fontenay-aux-Roses, FrancePublisher: Associated American Artists, NYCReference: Passeron - R. Passeron, Mario Avati L'Oeuvre Gravé 1955-2000; highly desireable image, increasingly scarceNotes: This beautiful mezzotint was printed using two copper plates for the colors and a third copper plate for the black. It was printed by Atelier Rigal in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, and then hand-colored by the Artist, in September 1982. It was printed in four states. The first two states had only one impression each. The third state (the proof state) consisted of 25 impressions. This impression is from the final state, consisting of 85 impressions, of which the first 60 were released by Associated American Artists in 1982.Provenance: Hatay Stratton Fine Art, Northampton, Massachusetts About the Artist: Mario Avati was both an etcher and a painter born in Monaco in 1921. In 1947, after studying at the National School of Decorative Arts in Nice at the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Paris, Mario Avati practiced all of the etching techniques. Ten years later, he is exclusively working with mezzotint, first in black, than from 1969, in colors. This meticulous and delicate technique gives to artworks a great depth and creates a sort of unreal space from which a pattern emerges. The artist contributed to rekindle this technique as a support for popular expression. Today, with Kyoshi Hasegawa and Yozo Hamaguch, Mario Avati is one of the most singular performer of the mezzotint technique. His work inspired by his classical background focusses mainly on still-life style – fruits, flowers, staged things, music instruments – or animals, all treated with great geometric care. Inspired by Gorgio Morandi's works whom he admires, Mario Avati positioned and organized his etchings just like Morandi's compositions. In addition to the making of hundreds of prints, Mario Avati illustrated many books (Lewis Carroll, Baudelaire, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Brillat-Savarin, Nostradamus, La Bible, etc). His works are showed in many museums all over the world and in France, in about thirty institutes of which the Chalcographie of the Louvre Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Gabinetto delle Stampe degli Uffizi in Florence, the Natinal Library in Madrid, the Tokyo Museum, the Museum of Art in Johannesburg but also several major private collections. The artist lived and worked in Paris for many years. He died in 2009.

Price: 950 USD

Location: Indio, California

End Time: 2024-12-26T15:06:35.000Z

Shipping Cost: 29.95 USD