Leonard Pytlak (b. 1910) (artist and printmaker)
By the Sea
American: c. 1940s
Signed in pencil by artist lower left
Titled in pencil in unknown hand lower left near outer margin
Serigraph
13.75 x 17 inches
$450
By the Sea
Beach Print by Pytlak
Beach Print by Pytlak
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A beach landscape of windswept dunes with tufts of grass, driftwood, birds and two nude sunbathers in the middle distance, by an influential mid-20th-century printmaker. On sunbather unfurls a red beach blanket in the wind and the other lies on a mustard-colored one.
Leonard Pytlak was a serigrapher, lithographer, painter and educator, known for his advancement of serigraphy (silkscreen printing) in fine art. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and the Art Student’s League. From the mid 1930s to around 1940, he worked primarily in lithography, and was a WPA artist. He turned to silkscreen printing and became a founding member of the National Serigraph Society. In 1941 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and received numerous prizes from prestigious institutions in the Forties including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design and the Library of Congress. Pytlak was also a member of the Art League of America, the Philadelphia Color Print Society and the Audubon Artists. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan, the Carnegie Institute, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art and several other U.S museums.
Condition: Generally very good with the usual overall light toning and wear. Faint matburn in margins can be matted out when framed, though pencil title is below mat burn line.
References:
Gilbert, Dorothy B., ed. Who’s Who in American Art. New York: American Federation of Arts and R.R. Bowker, 1959. p. 460
Malone, Erin K. “Contributors 1934-1942: Leonard Pytlak.” Dr. Leslie Project. 1994-2000. http://www.drleslie.com/Contributors/pytlak.shtml (22 January 2005).