This image of an owl is not typical of the Surrealist paintings for which Salvador Dali is known but shows a scratchy drypoint technique that appears in his late print work. Two different versions of this owl were printed in the 1960s. The first edition was the one on white paper in 1966. The full edition of this print was 106 plus artist’s proofs. The second edition was on a blue background. This edition was 200 prints plus artist’s proofs.

Born in Catalonia, Spain, Salvador Dali is instantly recognizable by his waxed, upturned mustache. Dali is one of modern art’s most distinctive figures. He is also one of the icons of the 20th century Surrealist movement, whose dreamlike images were drawn from the depths of the unconscious.

Even as a youngster he had a vivid imagination that would later define his artworks. In these, he conjured childhood memories and employed religious symbols and Freudian imagery in unexpected and often shocking pieces.

Around 1950 Dali started to move away from Surrealism, saying, “To be a Surrealist forever is like spending your life painting nothing but eyes and noses.” He developed an interest in science, religion and history and started to turn to the great classical masters of painting like Raphael, Velasquez, or the French painter Ingres for inspiration.

Besides being a painter, Salvador Dali was a highly prolific printmaker and created a large number of lithographs during his lifetime. Dali’s Signs of the Zodiac is a series of 13 lithographs originally forming a portfolio. Twelve of the prints represents one of the individual zodiac signs with the 13th print being the frontispiece showing all 12 signs together in a circular design.

In this portfolio, Dali created the signs in bright colors and expressive lines. Though they are a departure from his most well-known style of biomorphic and almost hyper-real dreamscapes, the depictions are uniquely Dali.

The portfolio was published by Leon Amiel in Paris and New York in two editions – one on Arches paper and one on Japan paper. It was printed in France by Mourlot. Only 250 copies were made. Due to the nature of the lithographic process, earlier editions are generally of a slightly better quality and are, therefore, more highly valued. Accompanying pages of text describing the characteristics of each Zodiac sign were written by Nicolas Sokoloff.

This original lithograph was created using crayon (with frottage*) on lithographic paper and transferred to a stone. There were 200 signed and numbered impressions on thin white vellus plus 1000 impressions signed in the stone, of which the DuMA’s is one of these.

In this lithograph, Picasso displays the most famous Surrealist technique called “automatic drawing” which requires the artists to draw freely on a blank paper, without worrying about composition, proportions, or even content. Like the Surrealists, Picasso used this technique as a means to avoid representation and allowing the unconscious mind to create.

This 1960 print is an example of Picasso’s late career work being a precursor to the Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1970s. Depicted is a costumed female performer on a horse in the center ring of a crowded circus. A clown is holding a dressage whip to the left of the horse, next to a patterned circus podium.

*Interesting fact: Max Ernst developed the frottage technique in the early 1920s. Frottage is made by laying sheets of paper over textured surfaces and rubbing with graphite. This creates an impression on the paper of the surface texture.  

Picasso was a prolific artist, having produced about 150,000 works, consisting of 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics, and 34,000 illustrations in his 78 year career.

During his early days in Paris, Picasso began creating the Barcelona Suite. There were five original oil paintings in the suite painted between 1901 and 1917. They depict Picasso’s memories of characters he met on the streets of Barcelona in his youth. When viewed together, the series shows a progression of the evolution from his blue period to his rose period.

In 1966, to celebrate Picasso’s 85th birthday, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona published a limited edition of offset lithographs to honor the artist and the city he was so fondly connected to. The series was after Picasso’s paintings from the Barcelona Suite. All of the prints were hand-signed by Picasso.

*Interesting fact: Offset printing or offset lithography is a mass-production printing technique where the image on the printing plate is transferred to an intermediate surface before being printed onto a print surface like paper. This creates a final image that is in the same orientation as the original plate image instead of the typical mirror image of lithography.

Max Ernst was born in Germany and became a naturalized American citizen in 1948. He was a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. He became a pioneer of Dada and Surrealism. A major art critic once said “Max Ernst is to Dada and Surrealism what Picasso is to 20th century art as a whole.”

Ernst was drawn to themes of fantasy and dream imagery. He made work depicting fantastic, often nightmarish, images that made reference to anxieties originating in childhood. He demonstrated a profound interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, which is apparent in his exploration of Automatism. Much of the artist’s work defied societal norms, Christian morality, and the aesthetic standards of Western academic art. His stint in the German army in WWI traumatized him, making him highly critical of western culture. This led to his vision of the modern world as irrational – which became the basis of his artwork.

Creatures of the Sea is from a publication, Festin, with text by Pierre Hebey, accompanied by 12 original lithographs by Ernst, each signed by the artist. They were originally contained in a cloth covered box in an edition of 79, published by Pierre Chave, in Vence, France in 1974.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Persis Robertson was an American painter and printmaker. Robertson was the daughter of attorney James B. Weaver and sculptor and woodcarver Fayette Atkins Weaver.

Robertson studied French, theater, and literature at Wells College, in Aurora, New York. She graduated in 1917. In 1932 and 1933, Robertson attended the Stone City Art Colony, organized by Regionalist artist Grant Wood. While there, two members of the colony, Lowell Houser and Adrian Dornbush, taught her lithography. Robertson also studied printmaking at the Art Students Workshop in Des Moines later in that decade.

Robertson’s lithograph, Alone, All All Alone, seems influenced by Wood’s prints for the Associated American Artists late in his career. Wood’s calendar series lithographs were inspired by the seasons as experienced in a rural setting. Those he created for the winter months seem especially bleak and filled with foreboding, as this Robertson lithographs does.

Robertson married Albert J. Robertson in 1918. They lived in Des Moines until 1953, when Albert received a position in the Eisenhower administration and the couple moved to Washington, D.C. Persis gradually left lithography behind, but she continued in creative pursuits, taking up paper cutting later in life. After her husband’s death, she relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she was living at the time of her death.

Robertson participated in numerous group shows during her career, including at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Print Club, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She presented work in solo exhibitions as well, and often won prizes at the art salon of the Iowa State Fair. She was also active with her husband in artistic circles in Des Moines; the two sat on the planning committee for the Des Moines Art Center, and she started the Art Students Workshop at the public library with Florence Cowles Kruidenier.