Larry Poons: Untitled. Print from the suite of 10 entitled 'Ten Works by Ten Painters' published by the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1964.

Image a grid of faint grey lines -diagonal and rectangular - on a white ground. Patterned irregularly within this grid with small black dots and ellipses

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.

Sirocco did the printing, supervised by Ives- Sillman.

On leaving high school in the mid-1950s Larry Poons studied music in Boston, where one of his tutors was the avant-garde musician/artist, John Cage. Recognising that his talent as a visual artist was greater than as a musician, Poons soon switched to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to study painting, but his work continued to be influenced by his interest in music. Ideas around musical notation and the crossover elements of chance and structure, which seem evident in works such as this print, may have come directly or indirectly from Cage. In the 1960s Poons painting devolved toward painting coloured dots floating on a contrasting field of colour – a technique which spearheaded the ‘op’art movement, but this was soon superseded by more his more expressionistic handling of paint.

CIRC.130-1969