Art

Item Description

India
Limited, numbered editions of 90
Hand-pulled screenprint on Deluxe Lana Quarelle paper

Paula Scher is a renowned artist and graphic designer. Scher recently expanded her highly acclaimed Maps series to create her most engaging work yet, depicting entire continents, countries and cities from all over the world that have been the critical focus of attention in recent headlines. Published by Stendhal Gallery, India (2009) pulsates in tropical colors, made to seem all the more exotic by being offset against a black Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. The print is adorned with gold underscoring the opulence and exoticism colonial powers sought in the country. Its swirling text and robust and unrelenting color scheme capture a country of contradictions, caught in the flux of its colonial past, its civilian poor, and its bombastic economic growth.

Paula Scher is a partner at Pentagram Design, Inc. and her work, such as her iconic logo design for the Public Theatre and the Citibank umbrella logo, are so pervasive that they are impossible not to recognize. Already regarded as one of the world’s leading graphic designers, Scher began exhibiting her fine art, large-scale acrylic map paintings, at Stendhal Gallery in 2006, catching the attention of both private collectors and institutions alike.

Scher's maps are painted on monumental canvases. Each geographic location is uniquely rendered in its own color-palate reflecting both cultural and personal associations with place. Cities, countries, and continents are meticulously recreated as conglomerations of beautiful color, line and sprawling text. She has re-envisioned these geographical spaces as landscapes to reflect the complex intersection of the personal and the political that structures our view of the world. Text stretches over their entirety: the place names, names of geographic features, and geopolitical information, yet this "objective" information is subjectively coded, defined by the artistic choice of color, font, and size. Thus Scher’s images are not simply beautiful, but subtly provocative and emotionally resonant.

Scher's hand-pulled screenprints are exquisite renditions of her massive maps paintings. Made in collaboration Andy Warhol’s master printer Alexander Heinrici, each print is realized with the same hand-drawn elegance of her painted maps. Paula Scher is involved in every step of the printing process, redrawing new plates in the same style as the master printmakers of the 20th century. Each limited edition print is inspected, signed, numbered and dated by the artist, and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Item Special Note

Certificate of authenticity from Maya Stendhal Gallery.
60" X 40"
Choose framed or unframed. Costs of framing and/or shipping will be added to bid amount.