Compelling art made in collaboration with a renown artisan and (relatively) affordable*. *Warning: enjoyable, but not suitable for flipping. Aldo Crommelynck, Master Printer for Prominent Artists, Is Dead at 77 By WILLIAM GRIMES Published: January 29, 2009 Aldo Crommelynck, a master printmaker whose self-effacing style and virtuosic command of traditional techniques coaxed the best out of European artists including Picasso, Braque and Matisse, and later helped younger American artists like Jim Dine and Jasper Johns express their visions on paper, died at his home in Paris on Dec. 22. He was 77. His death had been reported in some online art magazines and some European newspapers but not widely elsewhere. The cause was pneumonia, said Dick Solomon, president of Pace Prints in Manhattan, with which Mr. Crommelynck had a publishing partnership. Mr. Crommelynck collaborated with Picasso for more than 20 years and produced all of his prints after 1961. After setting up a studio near Picasso’s home in Mougins in 1963, he collaborated on the 750 prints that Picasso had created in his last decade, including the erotic etchings that make up “Series 347,” generated in a creative frenzy in 1968. In 1986 Mr. Crommelynck entered into the partnership with Pace and established a New York studio, where he worked with a long list of prominent American artists, among them Ed Ruscha, Chuck Close, Alex Katz and Mr. Dine, who titled his 2007 one-man show at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris “Aldo et Moi.” “He was one of the great printers of the 20th century, an alchemist as much as a master technician,” said Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, who organized an exhibition of Mr. Crommelynck’s prints in 1989. “He was a traditionalist, in the sense of having absolute command of his craft, but at the same time he would breathe life into things.” Aldo Crommelynck, the son of the Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck, was born in Monaco and at 17 began an apprenticeship in Paris under the French printmaker Roger Lacourière, a family friend. A highly skilled draftsman, he executed a series of etchings that won the Chardin Prize in 1953, but he chose not to pursue a career as an artist. Instead, he applied himself to copying the works of other artists for reproduction and to mastering the intricacies of intaglio, a printing method in which an image is incised on a plate, usually copper or zinc. Ink is then applied to the plate surface and wiped off, and the ink remaining in the incised lines is transferred to paper by a press. Mr. Crommelynck, who became renowned for the richness and evenness of his aquatint grounds, soon emerged as the principal creative force at Lacourière’s studio, where he worked with major artists like Léger, Masson, Rouault and Miró. He assisted Matisse on the aquatint series “Visages” (1945-52) and formed an especially close working relationship with Picasso. In 1955 Mr. Crommelynck founded his own atelier in Montparnasse, working with his younger brother Piero after his partner, Robert Dutrou, left to become the printmaker for the Maeght Gallery. His client list was stellar. Miró, Le Corbusier, Arp and Giacometti came into the studio to work. It was there that Braque executed his series of etchings and aquatints titled “L’Ordre des Oiseaux” (“The Order of Birds”), published with accompanying text by the poet Saint-John Perse in 1962. “I knew what he achieved in his paintings could perfectly well be achieved in copper also,” Mr. Crommelynck said. In 1963, when Picasso decided that he needed a printmaker close to his house in Mougins, in the south of France, Mr. Crommelynck set up a studio nearby and assisted on “Series 60” (1966-68), “Series 347” and “Series 156” (1970-72). “Picasso was a whirlwind, but Aldo could keep up,” Mr. Solomon said. After Picasso’s death in 1973, Mr. Crommelynck returned to Paris, where his atelier attracted British artists like Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Howard Hodgkin and a contingent of younger American artists, including Mr. Dine, Mr. Johns and David Salle. “He was an absolute master of every possibility in intaglio printing, with a real bag of techniques and tricks,” said Mr. Dine, who collaborated with Mr. Crommelynck on more than 100 prints. “He taught me everything I know about etching.” Mr. Crommelynck worked with Mr. Dine on the 25-print series “Nancy Outside in July” (1977-81) and on prints derived from Mr. Dine’s paintings of hearts and bathrobes. He assisted Mr. Johns on his etchings for an edition of Beckett’s prose fragments titled “Foirades/Fizzles” (1976), as well as for the series “Corpse and Mirror” (1973-75) and “Land’s End” (1978-79). “He was an intergenerational figure,” Mr. Weinberg said. “He worked with the great artists of the School of Paris in their later years, and then made the bridge to the next generation of artists, many of whom were American.” After a falling out with his brother, Mr. Crommelynck, at Mr. Dine’s urging, entered into the partnership with Mr. Solomon at Pace in 1986 to publish prints by American artists. From a printing studio in SoHo, he collaborated on projects with George Condo, Claes Oldenburg, Donald Sultan, Terry Winters, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1989 Mr. Weinberg organized a tribute exhibition, “Aldo Crommelynck Master Prints With American Artists,” at the Whitney Museum’s Equitable Center. Tall and gaunt, with piercing eyes, Mr. Crommelynck cut a bizarre but elegant figure. He was, Mr. Solomon said, “a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane, with incredibly long, spindly fingers.” Artists loved him, even those with little or no experience in printmaking, whom he nudged toward success through hints and gentle direction. Constant revisions and corrections did not faze him, and he remained calm and introverted in the face of artistic tempests. “He did not compete,” Mr. Dine said. “He was there to help you give birth to whatever image you had in mind.” Mr. Crommelynck was wily. Red Grooms, who created large-scale, densely populated scenes of the Deux Magots cafe in Paris and the Grand Concourse at Grand Central Terminal with Mr. Crommelynck, took time out to do a portrait of Mr. Crommelynck at work in a tweed jacket. “He had an idea about how to reproduce the texture of the jacket,” Mr. Grooms said. “He told me to get a bit of fabric, so I ran out on Canal Street and bought a glove from an African dealer, and he translated that into the print.” He was also game. For Chuck Close’s “Spitbite” etchings, Mr. Crommelynck, a chain smoker, contributed his own saliva to the acid mixture used to incise the image on the plate. “I think it was all those Gauloise cigarettes Aldo smoked,” Mr. Close told the curator Terry Sultan in 1988. “My spit never seemed to work as well.” George Condo (born 1957) - American painter, sculptor, drawer and graphic artist Clown Signed on the lower right and numbered on the lower left in pencil 19/55 Dry stamp of the publisher Aldo Crommelynck, Paris in the left corner Inscribed on the reverse side Sheet dimensions: 63 x 54 cm Image dimensions: 41.5 x 36 cm Good condition This color aquatint was made in 1989 by the American artist George Condo (born 1957). Depicted is a yellow clown with a red hat and a blue pearl necklace in front of a purple background. Due to the complementary contrast the colors are very intense and bright. The work is signed on the lower right as well as numbered on the lower left with ‘19/55’ in pencil and is mounted on cardboard (reversible). The dry stamp of the publisher ‘Aldo Crommelynck, Paris’ is visible in the left corner and en verso an inscription is visible. The watermark ‘Hahnemühle’ can be seen in the lower right corner. The aquatint is in good condition. The corners are slightly buckling and en verso three dissolved glue dots are visible. The sheet dimensions are 63 x 54 cm and the image measures 41.5 x 36 cm George Condo Title Sans titre Description George CONDO Né en 1957SANS TITRE - 1989Eau-forte en noir signée et numérotée More ... Medium etching Year of Work 1989 Size Height 26.9 in.; Width 19 in. / Height 68.2 cm.; Width 48.2 cm. Edition 2/55 Misc. Signed Sale of Artcurial – Briest- Poulain - F.Tajan: Wednesday, June 4, 2014 [Lot 00261] Estampes et Livres Illustrés Estimate 400 - 600 EUR (544 - 817 USD) Sold For 715 EUR (973 USD) Premium
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:16:22 +0000
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