Untitled, from Drawings portfolio

 

Frank Lobdell

  1921 - 2013 (biography)

1948  

lithograph, printed offset 

10 1/8 x 8 1/4" image size 

pencil, lower right 

not stated; from an edition of 100 or fewer 

 

 

Dictationbond by Fox River tipped onto cartridge paper 

published 

artist and Dixon, Diebenkorn, Stillman, Hultberg and Kuhlman 

17626 

$800.00 

Drawings, a portfolio of 17 lithographs, was created in 1948 by the Bay Area artists Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, George Stillman, John Hultberg, Walter Kuhlman and James Budd Dixon. Most of the artists were students at the California School of Fine Arts and exhibited their work at the Seashore Gallery of Modern Art in Sausalito. Drawings was conceived by the group as an effort to stave off the closure of their gallery as there were limited venues for exhibiting nonrepresentational paintings. Lobdell‘s acquaintance with Eric Ledin provided access to his offset lithography press. The artists employed litho crayons to make their drawings on aluminum plates which were then printed offset at Ledin‘s Mill Valley studio. The images were transferred to sheets of cream wove paper and the paper was then adhered to support sheets which were signed by the artists. The lithographs were then secured in a black construction paper folder. The portfolio was issued in an edition of 150 to 200 and the publishing time was eight days. Many portfolios sold at a minimum price, which was enough to purchase a bottle of Tequila for a party but not enough to save their gallery from closure. Over the years, the portfolios were broken up, particularly by the artists who traded away the individual prints. Complete portfolios are quite rare. Drawings holds it place in history as the first Abstract Expressionist portfolio created in the United States. It is in the collections of the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum New York, Oakland Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Library of Congress and the Worcester Art Museum.