Andy Warhol: screenprint from portfolio 'Ten Works by Ten Painters' published by Wadsworth Atheneum, 1964.

Modified back and white photographic image of police with dogs, and young black people. From press photographs of the Civil Rights Race Riots in Birmingham Alabama, 1964

382/500

Given by Kasmin Ltd.

Suite originally housed in a cream cloth-covered portfolio box with cream and white paper lining. On front X / + / X in blue and white and in blue on spine ‘TEN WORKS BY TEN PAINTERS THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM’ Container is unnumbered and housed elsewhere, currently (2011) at the back of '1st Mezz' in the National Art Library. Inside the container still remains four pages (description and transcript below):
Title-page: vertically in black ‘X / + [cut out] / X / [and horizontally through the same +] TEN WORKS [+] TEN PAINTERS / THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM’
Title-page verso of title-page: ‘Copyright 1964, The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut 67/500 [edition number in pen] / Designed and Produced by Ives-Sillman, New Haven, Connecticut’
Page 2: in caps a list of names: ‘GEORGE ORTMAN / FRANK STELLA / ELLSWORTH KELLY / ROBERT MOTHERWELL / ANDY WARHOL / STUART DAVIS / ROY LICHTENSTEIN / LARRY POONS / ROBERT INDIANA / AD REINHARDT’
Page 3: ‘This portfolio was commissioned and printed in an attempt to extend / as much of the visual impact as pssible of ten artists to paper and / to make the prints available to collectors who might not otherwise / have such a vivid slice of the artist. / The dry surface of screening seemed to be most apt to translate the / effect of their painting, both the flatness which is the unifying bond / between the ten, and the insistence of paint on the surface of canvas / so like the visible heft of ink on paper here. / Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr. Curator of Paintings’ [followed by a list of sponsors]
Dims. of container: 65 x 53.5 x 2.5cm.
Condition note: Spillages and staining all over container especially front cover.

The printing was done by Sirocco under supervision of Ives-Sillman.

Warhol took his imagery from popular media: magazines, television, cinema, advertising, packaging and so on. His choice sometimes appeared shocking, as in his electric chair series or the car crashes, but his apparently deadpan treatment of them often implies a radical critique of social mores. Here, the bravery of the Civil Rights Activists of the early 1960s is immortalised through Warhol's simple re-iteration of some of the most harrowing press photographs of police 'intervention'.

CIRC.127-1969