1952 IMPROVISATIONS ARTISTS EQUITY MASQUERADE BALL ... SPRING FANTASIA.
[New York]: Artists Equity Association, 1952. [12]pp. plus 99 leaves. Large quarto (305 x 235 mm). Plastic comb bound stiff pictorial card covers. 99 lithographed sheets, printed on rectos only, with color lithographs on rectos and versos of covers. Extreme fore-tips of wrappers a bit creased and soft, plastic comb a bit handsoiled, slight soiling to upper cover, and some offset incurred in printing to verso of upper cover, internally near fine. Item #WRCLIT73364
First edition of the third volume in the series. Copy #846 of two thousand numbered copies. In the creation of this lavish program for the 15 May Ball, held at the Hotel Astor, sponsors selected an artist or artists from the membership to create full- page original designs associated with their product or service. "Each page was designed by the artist directly on the litho plate, thus making this a collection of original lithographs" - prefatory note. Byron Browne, Adolf Dehn, Sol Wilson and Ruth Reeves created the color works for the covers, and Milton Avery, T.L. Feinenger, Antonio Frasconi, Chaim Gross, John Groth, Jacob Lawrence, Ben Shahn, Raphael Soyer and Max Weber were among the contributors to the internal plates, a few in colors, but the majority monochrome. A few artists contributed more than once, and while the majority are signed in the plate, a few are not. A marvelous and stylistically diverse showcase of some of the important talents in the field at the time.
Price: $1,500.00