George Ortman: Untitled. Screenprint from the suite 'Ten Works by Ten Painters' published by the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1964

Image printed predominantly in yellow. Image divided into 8 parallel joined vertical strips, variously hatched; in the centre of the image a white circle containing 4 smaller yellow circles and a square upended to be a diamond. Inside this diamond a smaller square, out of which 4 crosses have been symmetrically cut away. On either side of the central white circle are two white arrows : on the left pointing up, on the right pointing down

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.

Printing was by Sirocco under supervision of Ives-Sillman.

George Ortman is an American artist whose abstract constructions explore the borderline between painting and sculpture. He started his career as an Abstract Expressionist painter but moved on to more hard-edge, geometric abstraction. He came to critical attention in the late 1950s and 1960s for his canvases covered with shapes such as crosses, squares, rectangles or circles, cut from another canvas and dipped in pigment. In other works, flat compositions were made up from plaster, wood and other materials, or sometimes part of the composition would be derived from negative space - with areas cut away.

In this piece, working with the essentially flat surface of print on paper, Ortman suggests his interest in exploring the cross-over between ambiguity and reality and between depth and surface, through overlaying geometric patterns which are combined with physical ‘cut outs’ in the sheet. [Another impression of this print is Circ.530-1969]

CIRC.123-1969