Repose a.k.a.:"Sleep" and "Sleeper"

George Tooker

Painter George Tooker cautiously moved into multiples in the mid-70s. He produced 2 embossed intaglio prints, embossed at Joel Meismer & Company, Inc. in Plainview, New York. Walter Maibaum of Editions Press in San Francisco describes this process in the book "George Tooker," published by David Tunkel Gallery (ISBN:0-936680-00-8).

"...Mr. Tooker also completed his first Original Intaglio Print, "Sleepers." (Actually titled "Night," or the "The Dreamer") This edition was printed without any color. The artist achieved his 'complete image' through clever use of three dimensions. His work was embossed into paper with heavy pressure with an intaglio press.

The Artist executed a three-dimensional Bas-Relief image utilizing a combination of sculptors and dental tools. He carefully sculpted wax into the form....A metal mold was made from his wax, and it was from this mold that the edition was ultimately embossed (printed) on the intaglio press."

George Clair Tooker, painter and printmaker, was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 5, 1920. He studied at the Phillips Academy, a prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, and received his AB degree from Harvard University in 1942. That same year he entered the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School.

Between 1943 and 1945, Tooker was enrolled at the New York Art Students' League where he studied with Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Harry Sternberg. He studied privately with Paul Cadmus in 1946. While still a student at the ASL, Tooker exhibited with the Brooklyn Society of Artists in 1944. His work was included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1945 exhibition, Fifteen Americans, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1950 exhibition, Nineteen Young Americans. The first solo exhibition of his paintings was mounted at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York in 1951. Tooker produced his first graphics in the mid 1970s working in embossed intaglio and lithography.

Tooker moved to Hartland, Vermont in 1958, and permanently in 1975. Before his move he divided his time between Brooklyn, New York and Spain. George Tooker died on March 28, 2011 in Hartland, Vermont at the age of 90.