About the work

Original ink drawing, likely a preparatory work for a mezzotint. The composition is conceptually similar to a mezzotint print titled “Clear Vase and Landscape,” also created in 1995, a copy of which resides at the Whitney Museum of American Art. A similar Kipniss drawing titled “Curtain and Clear Vase” is held in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Title inscribed on tape attached to the dust cover verso. Drawing signed lower right in ink and dated ’95. Housed under glass.

About the artist…

Robert Kipinss—In the twilight zone between recollection and imagination, a New York painter has found a vista of mind and mood that he calls “the Inner Landscape.” With hushed tones, feathered brushing and eerie chiaroscuro, he invests his scenes with the appearance of reality and the ambiance of dream. — Time Magazine         

Robert Kipniss’ paintings, lithographs and mezzotints share stylistic characteristics and subject matter, typically depicting trees, landscapes and some interiors, frequently with a landscape beyond. No human figures are present, and all forms are reduced to essentials. Kipniss' use of exceptionally subtle tones and hues creates an overall atmospheric effect. His works have been described as conveying solitude and inward experience.

Kipniss once said “I may be painting trees and houses, but when I look at them, that’s not what I see. I see an atmosphere, a moment, a quickly passing experience that I’m trying to capture. My art is an art of intensity, of delving, of exploring the soul.”

The artist was born in New York City in 1931. He studied at the Art Students League in 1947 and Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, from 1948-50. He went on to receive a BA degree in English literature from the University of Iowa in 1952, and an MFA in painting and art history in 1954. He initially worked directly from nature, but he found himself revising his paintings more and more back in the studio until finally, as he says, “I found myself looking for things in nature that were already in my mind—so I decided to work from my own vision.” He uses the elements of a landscape as his vocabulary, rather than as objects. He then reworks and reworks.

Kipniss’ first one-artist show was in a 57th Street gallery in 1951, which was then the heart of the New York art world. Exhibiting and success are not the same, and this first show made a very modest ripple. Nonetheless, he was working and showing right from the start, and it never occurred to him to wonder if he would be successful or not. He was working and had become a small part of the art world. Life was good.

Since his humble beginnings, Kipniss’ works have been featured in more than 200 one-man shows. Many of these were mounted by some 50 museums in the United States, South America and Europe, including the Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modem Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of Congress and British Museum in London.

Robert Kipniss is now represented in the permanent collections of the institutions above, among many others, as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Art Institute; Yale University Museum; National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Biography sourced from the ebo Gallery website, Cutter & Cutter Fine Art, and the askART Archives.

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