Robert Kipniss

Mezzotints

Lithographs

Dry Points

Drawings

Publications

A Suite of Ten Lithographs drawn by Robert Kipniss for the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Mezzotints

Please contact the Gallery to obtain an extended portfolio of Mezzotints by Robert Kipniss

Lithographs

Please contact the Gallery to obtain an extended portfolio of Lithographs by Robert Kipniss

Dry Points

“With “Pages from a sketchbook,” Kipniss defined the negative space between tree trunks and gave the works the quality of sketches made on site.” Trudie A. Grace, “Robert Kipniss Intaglios 1982 – 2004”. Printed from two plates: the first a steel faced copper plate containing the image and the second, an unfaced copper plate to apply tone.

Please contact the Gallery to obtain an extended portfolio of Drypoints by Robert Kipniss

Drawings

Publications

“To begin to see like Kipniss, one must be prepared to elide congested tangles of branches, renounce decorative architechtural details, and simplify overly fussy groupings of objects.” Thomas Piché jr.

Robert Kipniss has been widely known for several decades as a painter and printmaker producing works evocative of intense contemplation and rendered with extraordinary technical facility. Part of Kipniss’s reputation lies in his frequent use of the mezzotint technique in a highly personal manner that involves showing the action of the hand in the intimate act of drawing. While his choices of subject matter-landscapes, views of houses, and still lifes-link him to representational art, Kipniss’s distillation of forms produces formal interactions that often verge on the abstract.

Robert Kipniss: Intaglios 1982-2004 reproduces 139 intaglio prints including mezzotints, drypoints, roulette prints, and etchings. Hand colored mezzotints, drawings, and paintings are also illustrated. Kipniss’s intaglios are found in many of the foremost public and private collections in the United States and Europe.

Thomas Piché, Jr., is former senior curator at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. Dr. Trudie A. Grace, former associate curator of the National Academy of Design, New York City, is curator of the Putnam County Historical Society & Foundry School Museum, Cold Spring, New York and lectures on art history at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

This stunning monograph of the paintings of Robert Kipniss is the culmination of nearly forty years work. His paintings, like his print work, are evocative of intense contemplation and rendered with extraordinary techincal facility. While Kipniss’s choice of subject matter varies from landscape to still life to a mixture of structures and natural forms they all share a sense of mystery, grace and quiet solitude. Although linked to representational art, Kipniss’s paintings produce formal interactions that often verge on the abstract. His work can be found in major collections in the United States and Europe.

A Suite of Ten Lithographs drawn by Robert Kipniss for the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Robert Kipniss A Suite of Ten Lithographs cover 1 Robert Kipniss A Suite of Ten Lithographs cover 2

In 1981, Robert Kipniss was asked to illustrate a bi-lingual publication of the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke by C.F. MacIntyre. The result was the beautiful suite of ten black and white lithographic prints, bound into the limited edition of 2000 copies, published by The Limited Editions Club. The effect is described by Dr. Karl Lunde in his book, Kipniss: The Graphic Works; i.e. “In these lithographs the artist makes tangible the elegiac poetry of the piercing beauty of landscape when experienced alone, and holds it in poignant solitude for our contemplation…Kipniss’s prints represent the emergence of purity and wonder. These poetic landscapes and objects are “dreams which lead us to discover the special unity of man and nature.”

“In the artistry of Robert Kipniss and Rainer Maria Rilke, man’s relation to the universal is a vital concern, though one expresses himself in the written work and the other in a graphic medium that has no language but the universal. The ten lithographs that Kipniss has made for the Selected Poems of Rilke evolve from years of communion by the artist with Rilke’s poetry - specifically with his favorite translations, the MacIntyre versions.” [1]

A rarely available, limited publication of boxed sets of “A Suite of Ten Lithographs drawn by Robert Kipniss for the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke”, printed in color, published concurrently with the limited edition of the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. These colored suites, published in 1981, inscribed and signed by the artist and boxed along with the associated poems by Rilke in an edition of 120 with 15 artist’s proofs and 10 H.C.’s. Offered separately or in combination with a signed copy of the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.

[1] The Monthly Letter of The Limited Editions Club, January 1981, Number 518.

Illustrations

The Poems

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