Reclining Nude
Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), [Reclining Nude], c. 1920, etching, signed in pencil lower margin. In pristine condition, soft fold upper right, with no sign of prior framing or exposure, the full sheet on yellow/cream laid paper, 6 x 7 3/4, the sheet 9 3/8 x 11 3/4 inches, archival mounting.
A fine impression.
Walt Kuhn was born in Brooklyn, and after a period of study art in Europe, he returned to the US to work as a cartoonist; illustrator, and developing artist. Aware of the great surge of modernist artistic activity in Europe, he joined with others to encourage Arthur B. Davies to get behind the idea of bringing a great European modernist art show to the US, and traveled with Davies to Europe to select art for the occasion (which became the 1913 Armory Show).
Reclining Nude was probably done c. 1920 when Kuhn, Davies, and a few others in the US were experimenting with modernism as they developed their printmaking skills. Kuhn successfully continued printmaking and painting in a modernist mode for the next 30 or so years.