EMIL J. BISTTRAM
Creation.
Photolithograph, circa 1940. 310x235 mm; 12¼x9½ inches, full margins. Edition of 50. Signed, titled and inscribed "No. 17" in pencil, lower margin. A very good impression of this scarce print.This image is based on Bisstram's (1895-1976) oil painting Cosmic Egg Series No. 1 (Creative Forces), 1936.Bisttram (1895-1976) was an American modernist painter who lived in New York and later Taos, New Mexico. He began his career as an illustrative artist in New York, but ultimately shifted direction, studying successively at the National Academy of Design, Cooper Union, the Art Students League and the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. Bisttram's early work is tied to Realism (in 1931 he went to Mexico on a Guggenheim grant, to study fresco techniques with Diego Rivera), but with successive trips to New Mexico beginning in 1930, and ultimately with his settling in Taos in 1932, his work became increasingly modern, colorful, spiritual and abstract. In 1938, Bisttram founded, with Raymond Jonson, the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization devoted to nonobjective painting that aspired to enhance the spiritual level of society. In his paintings of the late 1930s and beyond, Bisttram explored these concepts and gave titles, such as Upward, circa 1940, and The Oversoul, that indicated the spiritual understandings he intended. Throughout his career, Bisttram actively contributed to the artistic development of New Mexico. He continued to draw inspiration from legends and visual motifs native to the Southwest but couched them in the nonobjective, transcendental terms he had evolved during the late 1930s. In 1952, he co-founded the Taos Art Association.