First united by their love of editions, Carole and Alex Rosenberg cultivated an outstanding New York collection of graphic art, a reflection of their decades-long engagement with the art world and living artists. In 1969, Alex began to publish artists’ prints under the name Transworld Art, pivoting to the art world after selling the telephone answering service he co-owned, Anserphone. Carole Halsband soon joined the venture as an Associate Editor in 1973, after the two became acquainted at her Upper West Side gallery; her first exhibition featured Salvador Dalí’s Memories of Surrealism, the first print portfolio that Alex published. From 1968 to 1988, Transworld Art published more than 700 editions by over 60 artists, many of whom the couple also represented as partners at Alex Rosenberg Gallery. Married in 1977, Carole and Alex Rosenberg’s collection of prints and multiples reifies their personal and professional relationships with great names in modern and contemporary art, including Alexander Calder, Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, and Willem de Kooning.
Alex and Carole Rosenberg Alex, who developed a reputation as an expert in the field of prints, passionately worked as a lauded art appraiser from 1986 until the day he died, passing away at the mighty age of 103 in 2022. His over 60-year career across art and business was ripe with great honors and accomplishments – serving as a pilot in World War II, advancing a plethora of progressive political and social causes, and serving as president of the Appraisers Association of America, to name a few. In the context of these many impressive feats, publishing editions through Transworld Art still stood out to Alex as one of his greatest and most meaningful. “I can’t avoid a feeling of extreme nostalgia over my chance of having been able to work with so many gifted artists,” he recounted. “That was perhaps the greatest privilege of my life.”
“An American Portrait 1776-1976 was not created to either praise or condemn the American culture or history; rather, it was an attempt to show who we were, where we came from, and where we wanted to go.”
—Alex RosenbergAn American Portrait 1776-1976 was not only the project that brought Alex Rosenberg closer to his future wife Carole, who served as Assistant Editor for the edition, but its legacy persists as the most adventurous and elaborate project Transworld Art ever undertook. Published on the occasion of the American Bicentennial, the complete portfolio, spanning three themed volumes, gathered together the work of 33 notable artists and 50 American literary works to encapsulate the spirit of America’s past, present, and future. The volumes, titled Your Huddled Masses, Not Songs of Loyalty Alone, and Look at Beyond and See, are dedicated to different ideological frameworks related to the Bicentennial: the first, to the American “nation of immigrants,” the second to “the present, the efforts of Americans to realize the dreams of our forefathers,” and the third “lends insight into the future, the hopes and aspirations of Americans.”The commemorative portfolio additionally won Transworld Art a newly minted award at the Grenchen Triennial at the 1976 Basel Art Fair. A fair organizer had invited Alex to be part of the juried print contest sponsored by the University of Switzerland, and while customarily, only one print should have been entered, the woman chose five prints from An American Portrait 1776-1976 to be included in the contest. Judged blind, the jury never knew the names of the artists or publishers. As Alex recalled, “As the last round began, 12 prints remained, including all [five] of our prints. [The organizer] informed the judges that five of the prints were from one publisher. Not wishing for one publisher to win more than one prize, the jury created a special award for our prints, ‘The Best Publishers of 1976’.”
Literature
Wildenstein Plattner Institute P761
Artist Biography
Tom Wesselmann
American • 1931 - 2004
As a former cartoonist and leading figure of the Pop Art movement, Tom Wesselmann spent many years of his life repurposing popular imagery to produce small to large-scale works that burst with color. Active at a time when artists were moving away from the realism of figurative painting and growing increasingly interested in abstraction, Wesselmann opted for an antithetical approach: He took elements of city life that were both sensual and practical and represented them in a way that mirrored Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol's own methodologies.
Wesselmann considered pop culture objects as exclusively visual elements and incorporated them in his works as pure containers of bold color. This color palette became the foundation for his now-iconic suggestive figurative canvases, often depicting reclining nudes or women's lips balancing a cigarette.
Property from The Collection of Carole and Alex Rosenberg, New York
201
Smoker, from An American Portrait 1776-1976, Volume 3 (W.P.I. P761)
1976
Screenprint in colors, on Museum Board, with full margins, accompanied by the original paper folder.
I. 16 3/8 x 16 1/4 in. (41.6 x 41.3 cm)
S. 26 x 19 1/2 in. (66 x 49.5 cm)
Signed and numbered 'XL/L' in pencil (one of 50 in Roman numerals, the edition was 175 and 25 artist's proofs), published by Transworld Art, New York (with their blindstamp), unframed.
Estimate
$7,000 - 9,000
Sold for $10,795
Editions & Works on Paper
New York Auction 22 - 24 October 2024
149
This lot is no longer available.
344
This lot is no longer available.
376
This lot is no longer available.
