This is a very Rare Complete Folio of 9 prints, each hand-signed, and text panel, pencil-signed by Michael Rothenstein, Shelley Rose and Sebastian Carter, all in red clothbound fitted slipcase. The Song of Songs contains a passage from the Holy Bible. Rothenstein illustrates the story by creating stimulating printed images. L/E of 150. Many of the sets have been broken up, and sold as individual prints, with many of the remaining in Universities, Museums and Private Collections. Complete, signed Folios, rarely come on the market. A very rare opportunity to acquire a completed set. In good original condition, with provenance.
Disclaimer - Our prints/original art are purchased from various dealers, auctions and sales as "genuine" some with Certificates of Authentication", and are sold by us as such. However, in the unlikely event that the article is not genuine, we will make an immediate and full refund, without hesitation, if the item is returned to us in exactly the same condition it was received, with no damage, marks or folds, within 14 days of receipt.
Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993)
Michael Rothenstein was born in London, the youngest of four children of
the celebrated artist, Sir William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice Knewstub.
Although less well known as a painter, Rothenstein became one of the most
experimental printmakers in Britain during the 1950s and ’60s.
He studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and Central School of Arts and Crafts
from 1924 to 1927 and had his first one-man show at Matthiesen Gallery in 1938.
In the 1930s he was a frequent visitor to Essex, eventually moving to Ethel
House, in the village of Great Bardfield, Essex, shortly after the start of
World War II The artist held his first of many one-man shows at the Redfern
Gallery, London in 1942 and during the war participated in the Pilgrim Trust
Recording Britain project.
In 1954 he founded a graphic workshop in Great Bardfield, Essex, a
village which, by then, had become home to a colony of artists which included
Edward Bawden, Kenneth Rowntree and John Aldridge.
He went on to teach printmaking at Camberwell School of Art and was Art
Fellow at Sheffield University in 1962. Rothenstein has also published a number
of books, including Frontiers of Printmaking, 1966, Relief Printing, 1970, Suns
and Moons, 1972, and the folio Song of Songs, 1979.
Rothenstein showed in major London galleries and his work is in the
permanent collections of the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the
British Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was made Hon. RE and
elected RA in 1983.
Michael Rothenstein was enormously prolific throughout his career of
almost half a century, during which his vision and restless energy enabled him
to extend the boundaries of printmaking. He earned a worldwide reputation as
one of the most exciting British printmakers of the twentieth century.
Rothenstein gave to British art a particular liveliness and joie de vivre, a
relish for the physical world and a sensual flair for colour and texture in
both paintings and prints that went beyond the coolly measured aptitude for
design that distinguishes the work of his friend and near-contemporary Edward
Bawden. There is a kind of trustful innocence and light-hearted idealism,
praising the domesticated physical world and loving its 20th-century visual
language, that is oddly affecting in Rothenstein's best work. It comes from the
purity of vision and spirit of rededication shared by most of the notable
British artists who were young just after the murderous 1914-18 war. Michael
Rothenstein kept its faith alive. Rothenstein published a number of books,
including Frontiers of Printmaking, 1966, Relief Printing, 1970, Suns and
Moons, 1972, and the folio Song of Songs, 1979.
Selected Exhibitions’Rothenstein showed in major London galleries and
had a retrospective at Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, and touring,
1989-90. Posthumous exhibitions included Flowers Graphics, 1995, Braintree
District Museum, 1996, and in 2004 a show at Gainsborough's Housed, Sudbury, of
Rothenstein's prints, entitled An Exotic Menagerie, and Michael Rothenstein -
Printmaker at Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden.
Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum and Museum of
Modern Art in New York hold his work. Made Hon. RE and elected RA, 1983