Nude on Chaise
Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), [Nude on Chaise], c. 1920, etching, signed in pencil lower margin. In very good condition, no sign of prior framing, with margins (slight discoloration in margins), the full sheet on yellow/cream laid paper, 6 x 7 3/4, the sheet 9 3/8 x 11 1/4 inches, archival mounting.
A fine impression, printed with a light veil of plate tone.
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). [Nude on Chaise] 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. A debt to Matisse is evident. Kuhn successfully continued printmaking and painting in a modernist mode for the next 30 or so years.