Untitled

 

James Budd Dixon

  1900 - 1967 (biography)

1951 / printed 2002 

etching 

7 13/16 x 5 7/8" platemark 

signed "James Budd Dixon" by Bryon McClintock in lower right 

3 or 4 impressions 

inscribed at sheet edge: Printed Posthusously by Byron McClintock; note with this impression is annotated "Printed for Marian Schell / Gift of Byron McClintock / '04" 

Whitney accession # 2003.18 

ivory wove 

posthumous 

 

MASC192 

$1,000.00 

James Budd Dixon was deep into his exploration of non-representational, monochromatic printmaking when he created this untitled etching. The Drawings portfolio had already been published, establishing himself and the other members of the "Sausalito Six" (along with Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, John Hultberg, Walter Kuhlman, and George Stillman) as pioneers of American Abstract Expressionism and the San Francisco School.

However, it's Dixon's fascination with Jackson Pollock's early gestural works that seems to have made its mark on this etching. Unlike his lithographs in the Drawings portfolio, with their heavy, inky linework, this etching is rendered in sparse lines scattered across the plate like dandelion seeds, at once ephemeral and wild.

This impression was printed posthumously by artist Byron McClintock.