Handmade Holiday Cards shows how artists
imagined the holidays through original watercolors,
etchings, silk-screen prints, and drawings. Rarely seen
beyond the eyes of their recipients, these cards confirm
the irrepressible artistry of their senders. Handmade
Holiday Cards offers personal insight into the style
and sentiment of artists, including how they summed up
the year's events in their own lives and the world in
which they lived. The introduction by archives
specialist Mary Savig explores the intersections between
commercial holiday cards and the art world--how holiday
cards were first marketed as "affordable art" and how
selling their art to card companies often provided
income for artists in lean times. She then opens up the
more intimate dimensions of an artist's social network,
illuminating their relationships with dealers, curators,
teachers, and close friends. Captions introduce each
artist, compare or contrast the holiday card to his/her
body of work, and discuss the relationship to the
recipient when relevant. Handmade Holiday
Cards illustrates and contextualizes a broad range
of one-of-a-kind artworks or limited edition print
series by well-known artists such as Josef Albers,
Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Robert Indiana, John
Lennon and Yoko Ono, Robert Motherwell, Nickolas Muray,
and Ad Reinhardt. It will appeal to anyone interested in
greeting cards, ephemeral art, illustrated
correspondence, and the history of American art.
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