Lot 460: Charles Smith Block Painting Plus Virginia Map & Signed 32 Woodcuts Book

Group of three (3) Charles Smith (Virginia/American, 1893-1987) artworks and publications. Item 1: Cubist mixed media painting on heavy wove paper that depicts a stylized bird, with additional abstract composition en verso. Signed to recto, lower right. Unframed. Sheet: 9 in. H x 12 in. W. Item 2: Charles Smith’s “A Historical Map of Virginia” offset lithograph poster with numerous vignettes that illustrate significant people, places, and events in Virginia history. Printed by Garrett & Massie, Inc., Richmond, VA. 21 in. H x 27 in. W. 1930. Item 3: Charles. W. Smith and Virginius Dabney’s THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: THIRTY-TWO WOODCUTS (The University of Virginia Press, 1955), 2nd edition, signed by Charles Smith. 12 in. x 9 in. x 1/2 in. Note: Painting shows evidence of Smith’s “block painting” technique, especially in wing-like form at center-left. Biographical Note: “Charles Smith, a Virginia-born artist, is well known in America and abroad for his abstract paintings, his wood-cuts, and for his block paintings, a process of his own invention. He is represented in twenty-three museums and in many private collections. Among the museums owning his work are: The Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum of Non-Objective Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; Yale University Gallery of Fine Arts; The Seattle Museum of Art; the Portland Museum, Oregon; Newark Museum; Honolulu Museum; Institute of Modern Art, Boston; The Whitney Museum of American Art…The son of a pattern maker for a foundry which manufactured [stove doors], he was accustomed to the use of gouges and chisels from his earliest childhood, for his father carved these patterns from white pine in massive abstract designs in great variety. Art training at the University of Virginia, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Yale School of Fine Arts followed and Charles Smith naturally turned to the use of wood working tools in the making of block prints as a professional artist. Through his architectural subjects, book illustrations, books entirely of block prints and portraits he became well known but his unique contribution has been the development of the method of block painting…Where block paintings are done by imprinting, one at a time, various carved wood shapes which combine to form a composition. These compositions resemble paintings in their use of under-painting and over-coating, their textural variety and their color. Each is approached as a single work and cannot be repeated.” (Source: The Renaissance Society, Chicago)

CONDITION: 1st item in overall very good condition, with old mounting tape affixed to versos along upper edge. 2nd item rolled in original tube, as issued. With acid burn to left side of verso, approximately six inches into sheet, from contact with tube. Not visible on recto. 1-inch horizontal tear without loss to left edge of poster, extending through margin and into border design. Otherwise very good condition. 3rd item with accretions and staining to front cover and along lower edge of back cover, otherwise very good condition.