Frank Stella: Illustrations after El Lissitzky's Had Gadya 1982-1984

Catalog of an exhibition presenting nineteen of Frank Stella's rarely-seen, unique color variants based on his 1982-1984 print series Illustrations after El Lissitzky's Had Gadya. Created in 1985, these color variants explore further hand-painted color arrangements and printings using the remaining compositional plates and collage elements from the print edition. The works exhibited showed a complete group of Stella's Illustrations after El Lissitzky's Had Gadya alongside variations from within the series. This catalog contains full-page reproductions of 12 hand-colored, collaged images with lithographic, linoleum block, silkscreen and rubber relief printing and provides detailed information on all the different runs. In 1919, Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky (1890-1941) created a series of gouaches illustrating the traditional Jewish Passover song, Had Gadya (The Only Kid). Having seen these gouaches in the Tel Aviv Museum in 1981, Stella was fascinated by the movement and vibrancy El Lissitzky had created whilst using simplified, graphic forms. On his return to New York, Stella produced his print series illustrating, as Lissitzky had done, each line of the song. Over the course of two years, Stella utilized multiple printing methods including lithography, linoleum block, silkscreen, and rubber relief with collage elements and hand-coloring to create a series of twelve prints which were published by Waddington Graphics, London, at the end of 1984. After completing the edition, Stella created between two and nine variants of each of the twelve Had Gadya illustrations. Each continues the technically complex composition but is unique in the different combinations of vibrant colors and printings. The Had Gadya series is pivotal in Stella's work with the introduction of both the 'wave' motif, which inspired the seminal Moby-Dick series and his Cones and Pillars iconography., ISBN13:B008H8I12Q ISBN10:B008H8I12Q Material Type:paperback