LEE BONTECOU, 1981-82

An Untitled Print, b. 1931
Lithograph in colors, on Rives paper, with full margins, I. 87 7/8 x 38 1/8 in. (223.2 x 96.8 cm); S. 93 x 42 in. (236.2 x 106.7 cm). signed, dated `81-82' and numbered `2-3 P.P.' in pencil (a printer's proof, the edition was 14 and 5 artist's proofs), published by Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York (with their blindstamp), occasional creasing in the margins, an area of rubbing and skinning at the right sheet edge, otherwise in very good condition, framed.

LITERATURE Esther Sparks 34

An Untitled Print is the largest 'worldscape' print Lee Bontecou has produced and shows the influence of her summers spent in Nova Scotia while growing up and her fascination with nature and marine life.  Her father invented the first all-aluminum canoe and her mother worked in a factory which wired submarine transmitters during World War II. Artist-critic Donald Judd, writing about Bontecou's work in 1965, remarked on its ability to encompass "something as social as war to something as private as sex, making one an aspect of the other."  Despite his overriding fascination with the powerful objecthood and materialty of Bontecou's sculpture, Judd could not help but point to its allusive qualities.  The distinctive sensibility and highly personal vocabulary of forms and images in Bontecou's work have distinguished it even at points where it has coincided with directions explored by her contemporaries or resonated with the concerns and approaches of artists of a younger generation.  (Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Lee Bontecou, A Retrospective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 2003, p. 170)