Nude on Couch, Right Arm on Leg
Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), [Nude on Couch, Right Arm on Leg], c. 1920, etching, signed in pencil lower margin. In very good condition, traces of discoloration in margins, the full sheet on yellow/cream laid paper, 8 5/8 x 6, the sheet 11 3/4 x 9 1/8 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).
Nude on Couch, Right Arm on Leg 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. The influence of Matisse is apparent. Kuhn successfully continued printmaking and painting in a modernist mode for the next 30 or so years.
