Portrait etching of a woman in a style popular in the mid 20th century, a Modernist version of classicism, rendering three-dimensional form as a series of planar shapes.

Frederick Taubes was an artist, printmaker and writer on art. Born in Poland, his family fled to Austria at the beginning of World War I, where he studied art at the Imperial Museum and Academy of Art in Vienna. After the war, he continued his studies at the Academy of Munich, then switched to the experimental Bauhaus art school in Weimar in 1920, where he studied under the influential color theorist Johannes Itten, and absorbed the influences of the Modernist experiments in dada, cubism, and expressionism. He moved to New York City in 1930, where he had a successful career as a society portraitist, painting Baron von Romberg, Claire Booth Luce and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst among others. He employed a combination of traditional Flemish Renaissance painting methods and gestural brushstrokes, resulting in a strong sense of volume and form. He wrote a book on the Flemish techniques, The Mastery of Oil Painting, and was a frequent contributor to American Artist Magazine from 1943 to 1962. He also formulated a copal varnish painting medium for achieving traditional effects with modern tube oil paints that was successfully marketed by Permanent Pigments company. He also gave painting workshops and private lessons. Although he exhibited little after 1955, he continued to create art until his death in 1981. A member of the Royal Society of Arts, his work resides in numerous museum collections today, including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is also well known for his images of women, often draped, often shown with a dove-like bird.

Condition: Generally very good with the usual light overall toning and minor wear.  Scattered tears and creases to edges professionally restored.  Small chipped losses to corners.  All easily matted out.

Reference:

“Frederick Taubes.” Zellman, Michael David, dir. American Art Analog. Chelsea House: New York , 1986. Vol. 3, p. 936.