"Joe Magarac" 1948, Lithograph.

Edition: 250. Signed in pencil, William Gropper, lower right, and in the stone, lower left.

Image: 13 3/8 x 8 11/16 inches (339 x 221 mm). Sheet: 17 3/4 x 12 1/2 inches (451 x 317 mm).

Excellent condition. Good margins. Published by Associated American Artists (AAA). One of Gropper's best prints from his American Folk Hero's Series. Of this print and Gropper the AAA said:

Joe Magarac. A limited edition signed original lithograph by William Gropper. Briefly concerning the artist. New York born and bred, William Gropper studied under Henri, Bellows, and Giles. His paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy, Phillips Memorial Gallery, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Whitney Museum of American Art, Chicago Art Institute, Fogg Museum, Hartford Museum, Museum of Western Art in Moscow, Harkov Museum and many others throughout the world. His murals hang in the New Interior Building in Washington D. C.; Post Office Buildings at Freeport, L. I., and Detroit, Michigan, and other important public buildings.

In 1937 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and since then has received numerous major art awards including the Harmon Prize, the Collier Prize, and the Wanamaker Prize. He is the author of The Golden Land, a book of cartoons; Alay Oop, a novel in pictures; and Fifty-six Drawings of Russia; besides which he has illustrated over thirty other books.

The folk series included such figures as, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, and other mythic American heroes. The production of this series also involved a widely distributed map created in 1946 depicting America in relation to its folklore. Later, in 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy would interpret these images as communistic in origin and subpoenaed Gropper for investigation. Gropper pled the Fifth Amendment and was blacklisted by his representative galleries.   

$800.00

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Edition: 100.  Signed in pencil, Gropper, lower right; signed in the plate (in reverse), Gropper, lower left; numbered, 24/100, lower left; titled, Top Man, in the catalogue raisonne (Sorini 1998), and on the accompanying AAA sheet.

Image: 3 13/16 x 5 13/16 inches (97 x 148 mm). Sheet: 9 7/8 x 14 inches (251 x 355 mm).

Reference: Sorini 1998:xiii, 111, #111.

Excellent condition. Full original margins. An Associated American Artists print. A fine impression on white Pescia wove paper. Printed in two colors, using an underlying blank mixed color aquatint plate and the etching plate inked with burnt umber. Four pieces of archival matting tape on the reverse along the upper sheet edge, well away from image. 

Gropper did two sets of etchings for the Associated American Artists, the first in 1965, and the second in 1968. Both Top Man (here) and Witness (below) were done in the second printing which consisted of fourteen prints, all done in editions of one hundred.

$300.00

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Edition: 100.  Signed in pencil, Gropper, lower right; signed in the plate (in reverse), Gropper, lower left; numbered, 18/100, lower left; titled, Witness, in the catalogue raisonne (Sorini 1998), and on the accompanying AAA sheet.

Image: 3 13/16 x 5 13/16 inches (97 x 148 mm). Sheet: 9 3/4 x 13 15/16 inches (247 x 353 mm).

Reference: Sorini 1998:xiii, 109, #109.

Excellent condition. Full original margins. An Associated American Artists print. A fine impression on white Pescia wove paper. Printed in two colors, using an underlying blank tan plate and the etching plate inked with burnt umber. Four pieces of archival matting tape on the reverse along the upper sheet edge, well away from image.

As Sorini points out, of the fourteen prints done for Associated American Artists in 1968, ten of them reflected political subjects, Witness portrayed the artist as "a young and frightened Gropper ... the model for Witness" (Sorini 1998:xiii). Though many years had passed, Gropper, in 1968, was still reflecting upon the McCarthy hearings.  

$450.00

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