Prints I published | Exhibition Catalogue by Bernard Jacobson Gallery

Prints I published 13th February - 9th March 2019

bernard jacobson gallery

On the cover

Howard Hodgkin For Bernard Jacobson Lithograph with hand colouring Edition of 80 105 x 149.9 cms (41 1/3 x 59 ins) see p. 30-31

For further information, please contact: mail@jacobsongallery.com tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3431

Prints I published 13th February - 9th March 2019

Including works by Ivor Abrahams, Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Robyn Denny, Joe Goode, Howard Hodgkin, Leon Kossoff, Malcolm Morley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ed Ruscha, Richard Smith, William Tillyer and others

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In 1969 Bernard Jacobson opened his first London gallery; a fourth-floor walk-up on Mount Street, Mayfair dealing in prints by international stars, including Warhol and Oldenburg, as well as publishing prints by leading British artists including Malcolm Morley and Robyn Denny. Printmaking fitted the radical, pop-sensibility of the time and Jacobson was part of that heady explosion of interest in the medium.

This year opens with Jacobson’s personal selection of important work from 6 centuries of printmaking, Prints I wish I had Published and now moves on to a selection of some of the highlights of the prints Jacobson did publish during his long career – and what a selection it is. When Jacobson began in 1969, printmaking was enjoying an explosion of interest and was a medium of choice for a whole generation of artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Andy Warhol and Peter Blake. Jacobson found himself entirely in the right place at the right time and this exhibition is a glorious journey through the five decades which were to follow. Screenprinting dominates the earlier works here and it was a process particularly fitted to the aesthetic of the 60s and 70s; it delivers flat, bold washes of colour and was perfect for rendering the simplified photographic images at the heart of both the Pop and Photorealist movements prevalent at the time. Malcolm Morley’s photorealist Horses (1969) was the first print to be published by the gallery and was created by an artist variously described as the best painter of his generation (Salvador Dali) and as “the last wild man of modern art” (Robert Hughes). This pastoral depiction of a foal with his mare in an impossibly verdant setting has something altogether unsettling about it; the green overheated – the sunshine as it radiates down on the horses, almost nuclear. Privacy Plot: Flower Garden (1970) by the British artist, Ivor Abrahams is a print from one of the numerous folios by the artist to be published by Jacobson, part of an ongoing series based on that most English of subjects - the garden – created using illustrations from popular gardening magazines. Like Morley however, there is nothing genteel about the way Abrahams renders these ordered urban scenes; they are transformed by eye popping, flat areas of colour which vividly communicate the artist’s interest in the relationship between nature, artifice and art. As well as colour, screenprinting offered artists the opportunity to make prints on a much bigger scale than other methods. At over a metre

across, Patrick Caulfield’s Two Whiting (1972) - from the aptly titled folio 14 Big Prints fully exploited this quality, as well as adding an unusual oval ‘mount’ for the printed image to float in. Howard Hodgkin favoured an altogether more dense, layered and abstracted approach, for his large, hand coloured lithograph For Bernard Jacobson (1979). Unlike Caulfield’s print, this work is all dark, brooding colour with a ‘window’ of damson ink, applied with strong gestures framing and containing it all. In the midst of all this colour, we also find moments of quiet contemplation and restrained hues, Leon Kossoff’s, Outside Kilburn Underground (1984) is from an ongoing series created around the artist’s home and studio in London. The Kilburn of the 80s pictured here is a very different place to the London of 2019, where even once gritty communities have been transformed by the property boom. Kossoff’s Kilburn has a sense of community but it is also dark and claustrophobic– the layered and scratchy lines of the etching, perfectly describing the physical act of observational drawing from which it sprang. Ed Ruscha’s print I’m Amazed (1972) also demonstrates a sense of physical mark- making, but this time light as the air which seem to carry the serried ‘beads’ of colour as they spin out into the ‘cosmos’ of the picture plane to reveal the words of the title. If Ruscha’s subject is the everyday stuff of contemporary Americana, for the British artist, William Tillyer it is usually something altogether older, rooted in a British Romantic tradition while also acknowledging a conceptual notion of the artifice of art and nature. Living in Arcadia (1991) is a highly unusual Intaglio print by Tillyer, produced using a tactile, embossed technique to create depth and texture which is reminiscent of the layered and complex surfaces of his paintings. While Arcadia is often used to describe the sublime and pastoral, as used by Tillyer in this print, it might be but a step away from Ruscha; Living In Arcadia was produced during a particularly productive visit by the artist to the experimental studios of Mixografia in Los Angeles.

John Hoyland 14 Big Prints: 25.12.71 1971 Screenprint, Edition of 100 106 x 157.5 cms (42 x 61 1/2 ins)

Ed Ruscha 14 Big Prints: I’m Amazed 1971 Screenprint, Edition of 100 101.3 x 152 cms (40 x 60 ins) £ 7,000 $ 9,000

William Tillyer ‘the guests were served by naked negresses wearing only slippers and stockings’ 1974/2018 Collage relief printing on Arches paper, Edition of 25 66 x 50.8 cms (26 x 20 ins) £ 750 $ 970

Patrick Caulfield was born in Acton in Middlesex in 1936. He spoke with a slow, measured and plummy posh accent. I don’t actually know how he got to speak that way because they don’t normally speak that way in Acton. I really, really liked Patrick. I first saw his work at the Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1959 and I just loved his paintings. The next time I can remember seeing his art was at the New Generation show at the Whitechapel gallery in 1964. He then became labelled as a Pop artist, which he never really was, and in fact he did not approve of that link. He told me he was actually a formal artist, whatever that meant. In truth he simply made wonderful pictures, very often witty, with dynamic colours and compositions, strangely unique in their clarity and original style. Unfortunately he was often compared to Roy Lichtenstein. That was really unfair and incorrect. There were definitely superficial similarities but I think I may actually prefer Patrick’s paintings. His dry wit in the paintings was borne out in the dry wit of his conversation. He once said, when asked by a critic friend of mine what he thought of Howard Hodgkin’s work, he considered and said Howard Hodgkin didn’t have a great sense of colour. Which is truly witty, when you think Howard’s main asset was often thought to be a heightened sense of colour. But Howard was a big fan of Patrick the man and Patrick the artist. He said to me more than once that I should take him on as an artist, away from Leslie Waddington. He said he felt the artist was wilting under his roof. Although Leslie had taken Peter Blake away from me in 1972 I didn’t intend to take Patrick away from Leslie in 1982. The kid from Acton did okay all the same, from humble beginnings, and being inspired to be an artist when he saw Moulin Rouge in 1952, the movie about Toulouse-Lautrec.

Patrick Caulfield 14 Big Prints: Two Whiting 1972 Screenprint, Edition of 100 110.5 x 153 cms (44 x 60 ins) £ 3,000 $ 3,800

John Walker Blackboards III 1973 Lithograph, Edition of 30 102 x 69 cms (40 x 27 ins) Â£ 400 $ 516

Robyn Denny From Nature III 1973 Screenprint, Edition of 60, Set of 5 102 x 137 cms (40 x 54 ins) Â£ 750 $ 970

Sol LeWitt Bands Not Straight in Four Directions (red) Bands Not Straight in Four Directions (yellow) Bands Not Straight in Four Directions (blue) Bands Not Straight in Four Directions (multicoloured) 1999 Oil-base Woodblock on zangetsu paper Edition of 75, Set of 4 37 x 90 cms (14 1/2 x 35 ins)

Barry Flanagan Dark Blue 1976 Linocut, Edition of 100 19 x 38 cms (7 1/2 x 15 ins)

Anthony Gross Leo’s Vineyard 1975 Engraving, Edition of 50 40 x 50.5 cms (15 11/16 x 19 7/8 ins) £ 1,300 $ 1,680

I would love going out to Henry Moore’s home and studio at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. I felt like I was playing truant from the art world that I was primarily in – Denny, Smith, Tillyer, Hockney, Hodgkin. But arriving at his domain was more like visiting a giant, such as Picasso or Matisse, although in the English landscape. He was humble and so generous with his time. This gentle giant needed me just as much as Picasso would. He had seen it all, received every accolade he was willing to accept. One day I found him quietly at work in the studio. He was photographing some maquettes and I was surprised that he would photograph them, rather than a professional photographer. He told me that nobody fully understood his work and he needed to get the angle just right, to get the full effect. On one occasion, I bought a rather large series of drawings from him. That was enough of a thrill in itself. Before I left, after lunch, I said my goodbyes and he said I should be careful to make sure that I presented them well. He added, ‘Even a Michelangelo unframed doesn’t look as important as it could’. The humble artist, with high aspirations.

Henry Moore Animals - De Luxe Book: Elephant Animals - De Luxe Book: Tiger 1982 Etching, Edition of 50 12.3 x 9.8 cms (4 3/4 x 3 7/8 ins)

Howard Hodgkin Blue Listening Ear 1986 Etching with hand colouring, Edition of 100 61 x 76 cms (24 x 29 7/8 ins) Â£ 6,000 $ 7,760

18 Small Prints 1973, Edition of 100

Full set framed Full set framed

£ 12,000 $ 15,508

from the top left William Tillyer, Untitled Etching, 15 x 20.8 cms

£ 300 $ 390

Gordon House, Small Arc Etching, 20 x 15 cms

Richard Smith, Untitled Etching, 20 x 15 cms

£ 500 $ 650

Peter Blake, Tiny Tim T.N.T. Wood engraving, 21 x 15 cms

Patrick Caulfield, Night Sky Screenprint, 20 x 15 cms Nigel Hall, Untitled Etching, 20 x 15 cms Richard Hamilton, Un des Effets des Eaux de Miers Lithograph, 21 x 15.2 cms

£ 800 $ 1,040 £ 300 $ 390 £ 1,000 $ 1,300

Ludwig Sander, Untitled Screenprint, 20 x 15 cms

£ 300 $ 390

Dieter Roth, Uvigs Bank Islands Etching, 21 x 15.2 cms

£ 400 $ 520

Ken Price, Crabcup Miniature Screenprint, 20 x 15 cms

£ 1,200 $ 1,550

Ivor Abrahams, Four Seasons Lithograph, 21 x 59 cms

£ 600 $ 775

£ 150 $ 200 £ 800 $ 1,040

Peter Phillips, Untitled Screenprint, 20 x 15 cms

£ 400 $ 520

Bill Jacklin, Rocking Down the Line Etching, 20 x 15 cms

£ 300 $ 390

Ed Ruscha, Hot Shot Lithograph, 15 x 21 cms

£ 7,000 $ 9,050

Eduardo Paolozzi, Me Lithograph, 20 x 15 cms

£ 500 $ 650

Bernard Cohen, Open Screenprint, Edition of 100, 20 x 15 cms

£ 150 $ 200

David Hockney, Postcard of Richard Wagner with a Glass of Water Etching, 20 x 15 cms Robyn Denny, Untitled Screenprint, 20 x 15 cms

£ 500 $ 650

It was 1973 and I was strolling down Cork Street, having just published my Eighteen Small Prints portfolio. A year earlier I had released the Fourteen Big Prints series. It had been launched at the Tate Gallery and was a big hit, both critically and commercially. A tiny note was pinned to my desk, complaining that local dwarfs had been offended by the gargantuan works of art. I immediately recognised the author of the note and I also got the humour. I called Peter Blake, who had made the stunning Studio Tackboard for the portfolio. “Love your note, Peter. Very funny,” I said. “If you would make a miniature print, I will do a series of small prints.” Peter of course agreed. And so the Eighteen Small Prints came about. Many of the same artists came on board, Peter himself, Ivor Abrahams, William Tillyer, Ed Ruscha, Eduardo Paolozzi. But I added new names for the second series, such as Peter Phillips, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Richard Smith.

But I had left one artist out. In those days we didn’t talk too much about Howard Hodgkin and as we met up on Cork Street that morning he had tears in his eyes and said that I knew he made small paintings and he felt he should have been invited to contribute. It was an oversight on my part and I commissioned him there and then to make a whole series, which became More Indian Views. I became his exclusive publisher and a couple of years later I suggested he might be interested in illustrating E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. We agreed on a fee and I paid him a monthly advance immediately. Months and months went by and I would gently jog the artist’s memory and he said he was working on it. Eventually I realised that he wasn’t and I threatened to involve lawyers. He said he would make good, and produced For Bernard Jacobson, perhaps the best print he ever made. Howard Hodgkin For Bernard Jacobson 1979 Lithograph with hand colouring, Edition of 80 105 x 149.9 cms (41 5/16 x 59 ins) £ 35,000 $ 45,600

Marcolm Morley Horses 1969 Screenprint, Edition of 75 70 x 79 cms (27 5/8 x 31 1/8 ins) ÂŁ 600 $ 775

The first print I published was Malcolm Morley’s Horses. That was 1969 and I was 26. One of the more recent prints I published was Harold Cohen’s Untitled # 050106 (Green). The first was ridiculous, as it was a screenprint, taken from a photograph of a painting by Malcolm, which was taken from a photo in a calendar. To add to the joke, Malcolm had to get permission from his therapist to make a print from it. The print was a best seller within weeks of publication. Even by the time of my arrival into the art world, it had become stupid and vacuous, perhaps on the strength of the entry into the pantheon of Fine Art of the dubious contributions of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, two artists who went from ‘Fun’ to ‘Genius’ in a matter of one or two decades. (The power of money and ignorance). Some forty years later I would publish the third print on this wall. Harold Cohen was a highly prominent and urgent artist in the sixties, who began by making deeply fascinating abstract paintings, which were shown by his then dealer, the wonderful Robert Fraser. Over time he became more and more interested in what could perhaps be called visual semantics, if such a thing could exist. He would represent Great Britain in 1966, along with his brother Bernard, Richard Smith, Robyn Denny and Anthony Caro at the

Venice Biennale. They were the guys! Soon he would become intrigued by the enormous possibilities of the computer, way back then, in the sixties. It was really early days but Harold investigated. He was soon noticed by the art and computer department at the University of California, San Diego. He moved to Southern California for a short stint of teaching at the university and stayed there until his death in 2016. Actually, this print is not made by Harold, but by his great friend, Aaron – a computer. So Malcolm wasn’t making High Art in his print, nor was Harold. But Harold did know exactly what he was doing. If you look at Pop Art Redefined, on this same wall, Eduardo Paolozzi, one of the British art world’s most intelligent and original artists, has sandwiched himself between these two art world stars, he, being a bigger and brighter star than either of them. He has come up with an image where monkeys, given enough raw materials to work with, will eventually make a Frank Stella painting. Many years later I did introduce these two giants, Frank and Eduardo, to each other. Eduardo was a bit sheepish about it, and Frank was not amused. I could go on and on about the triviality and shallowness of art after Abstract Expressionism, with few exceptions. I could have a good laugh about the silly paintings by Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, but that would just be mean.

I can add myself into the mix, by admitting to publishing small dots on a large sheet of paper by Bernard Cohen. They seemed fresh and relevant on publication day, in the early seventies and now, well, I have to scratch my head and stare at the dominant whiteness. When the great art writer Clement Greenberg was visiting Kasmin’s Bond Street Gallery at around this time, he asked Kasmin when the next exhibition would be going up, to which the dealer replied that it was already up, and on the walls of his beautiful gallery. They were paintings, giant versions of my Cohen prints. I’m quite sure that Greenberg was being mischievous, although it sure was a moment for me. Prints can in some ways be quite intimidating, because, like

books, they are actually in print and give a sensation of permanence. Malcolm Morley, Harold Cohen, Eduardo Paolozzi are sadly all no longer with us, working away in the studio in the sky. Bernard Cohen can still defend his dots. The dilemma takes me back to Honoré de Balzac, with his great book from the nineteenth century, The Unknown Masterpiece. Is Frenhofer’s painting really there? Is this intense and extremely private man an utter failure or is he actually a genius? Or is he indeed both?

Bernard Cohen April Suite No.3 1977 Lithograph, Edition of 50 72 x 90.5 cms (28 5/16 x 35 5/8 ins) £ 150 $ 200

Eduardo Paolozzi Pop Art Redefined

Harold Cohen Untitled # 050106 (Green)

1971 Screenprint and collage, Edition of 100 56 x 39 cms (22 x 15 1/2 ins)

2005 Digital print on paper, Edition of 30 147.5 x 119.5 cms (58 1/8 x 47 ins)

ÂŁ 800 $ 1,040

ÂŁ 600 $ 775

Peter Blake is famous for creating the cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for The Beatles. He designed it with his then wife Jann Haworth. His dealer in the sixties was the famous, the infamous, the wonderful and brilliant Robert Fraser. I had known Peter for ages, back in the days of Swinging London, Portobello Road, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, and also of Robert Fraser. Anyway, the sixties had ended and the seventies had arrived, less crazy, less noisy, perhaps less dripping with the previous decade’s talent. But Robert had got himself caught up in a heroin bust with Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. He was sentenced to six months hard labour in 1967 but when he was finally a free man, he had lost interest in the gallery, his addiction got even worse and he closed in 1969. Peter and I got together in 1969 and I became his dealer. We went to Rock concerts and Jazz concerts, we enjoyed the dying embers of Swinging London together. In fact, one year before 1968 we made a limited edition of that marvelous image of Babe Rainbow, screenprinted onto metal. The artist scratched his signature one hundred times on the right hand corner. Peter’s passion for Pop music, celebrities, circuses continued and in fact continues to this day, when the great man, Sir Peter Blake, gets close to 90.

Peter Blake For John Constable 1976 Etching on paper with photograph, tracing paper, postcard, and paper clips, Edition 100 65.8 x 49.8 cms (26 x 19 5/8 ins) £ 900 $ 1,170

Working with Bill Brandt was my one and only foray into the world of photography. He charged me £300 for the image – for the whole one hundred copies! I insisted on paying more but he just wouldn’t have it. He said, “I am a photographer, not an artist.” Now there’s a real artist for you. And also such a gentle and kind man. His photo was part of the portfolio I made to celebrate the bi-centenary of John Constable’s birth. The portfolio in its entirety was launched at the Tate Gallery. He had the idea of photographing Willy Lott’s cottage, which had been owned by Constable’s friend and neighbour on the River Stour. Bill Brandt drove down to Suffolk to take the photograph he had in mind. He wanted to get the reflection of the building in the iced-over water. But there was no ice that day. So he then made another trip and got the image he wanted. What a gentleman. What a great photographer.

Bill Brandt For John Constable 1976 Photograph mounted on board, Edition of 100 40 x 46 cms (15 3/4 x 18 ins)

David Hockney For John Constable 1976 Etching, Edition 100 38 x 44.5 cms (15 x 17 1/2 ins)

John Hoyland For John Constable 1976 Lithograph with acrylic, Edition of 100 70 x 96.5 cms (27 1/2 x 38 ins) Â£ 1,200 $ 1,550

Patrick Caulfield For John Constable 1976 Screenprint, Edition of 100 102.5 x 77 cms (40 x 30 ins) Â£ 5,000 $ 6,470

Dick Smith, along with his good friend Robyn Denny, was a bit of a hero of mine. Which was sad for me, in 1970, because I, in my twenties, already the publisher of his wonderful prints, was with him in Venice. He was the artist chosen to represent Great Britain at the Biennale that summer. Robyn and Dick and I had some spare time, so we three went on a vaporetto over to the Lido for a while. When we returned to the mainland, Betsy was waiting at the water’s edge. She tore him off a strip, in front of his friends. I was embarrassed for him and I was angry also. The great British painter, having one of the most important moments in his career, being scolded publicly by his wife for going off to the Lido for a couple of hours. But Dick was not a tough guy really. He was soft and gentle, and a truly wonderful painter, one of the very few who was so highly respected in America and by so many of the great American painters. Artists like Jim Rosenquist would always ask me, “How is Dick?”. Larry Poons would do the same, Frank Stella would also. He moved British art forward, from the rather dreary forties and fifties, to the glamorous and exciting sixties. He died in 2016.

Richard Smith Lawson Set II (purple tied in 3 sections) 1973 Lithograph, Edition of 50 58.5 x 79 cms (23 x 31 ins) £ 800 $ 1,040

It is hard for me to believe that Peter Stroud, who died in 2012, would have been one hundred years old in two years’ time. I was mesmerized by his sixties paintings, which I had seen a long time ago at the Marlborough Gallery. These quiet and deeply beautiful works would always stay in my mind, until I finally met up with him in the seventies and published two series of stunning screenprints by him. Unlike so many artists, Peter was not a pushy or demanding man, so his career was undistinguished – unlike the paintings themselves, which were so very special.

Peter Stroud Clifford Suite: Burgundy 1972 Screenprint, Edition of 75 38.1 x 41.91 cms (15 x 16 1/2 ins) £ 250 $ 330

Back in the mid-sixties I did a story for my newspaper, The Daily Mail, on women artists. Obviously I wrote of Bridget Riley and her Op-Art paintings. I also included Kim Lim, the beautiful and demure wife of the tough guy of new British Sculpture, Bill Turnbull. They were in Camden Square. Just up the road from them was yet another woman artist, Tess Jaray. I really liked Tessie’s paintings and even bought one. She was so correct, and got me to buy it through her dealers, the Hamilton Gallery, which was managed by Annely Juda. I paid a hundred pounds, at the agreed rate of twenty five pounds each quarter. We kept in touch and I would often visit her and her husband Marc Vaux in Camden Square. I would from time to time buy beautiful screenprints from her. Marc would always be sociable but kept himself in the background, honouring the fact that I was Tessie’s guy. I had to nag Marc to see his work and eventually I was allowed in. They were enormous canvases, courageous and heroic, ascetic – and beautiful. I would eventually buy one. Years and years went by, I had become a rather successful international dealer and Norbert Lynton, the great writer on art, knew that I had swung hugely in favour of Marc’s paintings.

He suggested that I should take on the career of Marc Vaux which I did. I really had thought that, however good Tessie’s paintings were, I found Marc the greater of the two excellent artists. In fact in time I considered him more interesting and significant to me than Bridget herself. Perhaps he was on a par with the giants, Robyn Denny and Richard Smith. Marc remains a star in my firmament and he continues, in his late eighties, to push the boundaries of art, of light and colour and form. As he remains such a self-effacing man, his reputation, without the slightest hint of self-promotion, remains nowhere near the level he deserves. Perhaps it was all because his career began with a minor gallery, the Axiom, and Robyn and Dick were with the charismatic and high profile Kasmin. I did end up representing Dick, Robyn and also Marc for their paintings, although not Bridget. She had invited me over to her studio in the early nineties. Although I thought her new paintings were good, she wanted them to sell for forty five thousand pounds each. I declined the offer and she would go on to bigger and better things.

Marc Vaux Light Form 255.130

Tess Jaray April Suite II (grey)

2008 Acrylic, Edition of 35 31 x 31 x 5 cms (12 1/5 x 12 1/5 x 2 ins)

1971 Screenprint, Edition of 70 68 x 82 cms (26 3/4 x 32 1/4 ins)

Â£ 1,500 $ 1,940

In the very early sixties, while in my teens, I would buy etchings by the artist Bernard Kay from his home and studio in Holland Park. About £5 each in those days, quite a bit for the artist and just about all my money for the week, while earning £6.10s.0d, my wages for the week, writing for the Willesden Chronicle. One day a door in Bernard’s rambling house swung open, and there was this wonderful painting, with its creator studying it, he in profile and in deep contemplation. “Who was that?” I asked Bernard. “Oh, just some artist I rent a room to.” That artist was Robyn Denny. And that was a great painting, in close-toned hues, brooding and sombre and mysterious. That was real art, I felt. Bernard kept him away from me, although in time I did get to know him. I would eventually become an art dealer and would be the world’s exclusive publisher of his prints, and in time represented his paintings too. Robyn was one of the toughest and most uncompromising and substantial painters of abstract art that this country has ever produced. He set his standards extremely high and, although he is exceptionally neglected today, I would be surprised if there isn’t a new public for his enigmatic paintings and prints again one day. The deep subtlety of his work doesn’t quite fit in with the mood of today, of needing and getting instant gratification. His paintings actually ask you to slow down and look carefully.

Robyn Denny The Paramount Suite: Burgundy 1969 Screenprint, Edition of 75 66 x 86 cms (26 x 34 ins) £ 900 $ 1,170

This is a moment in time when the word Maverick sounds more like a name for a new car or a new bar of chocolate, than it does for what it used to stand for. In this small and rather anodyne world of current art, the one we are living in these days, two Scotsmen stand out as possibly the real thing – Mavericks. One is sadly no longer with us, the other is very much here among us. They have both embarrassed me, thrilled me, educated me and also certainly made me laugh out loud. Eduardo Paolozzi, who died in 2005, was the child of Italian immigrants, grew up in Leith and moved to London in the 1940s, before heading off to Paris at the end of that decade. There he got to know giants of sculpture, such as Jean Arp, Constantine Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti. He was a maverick all right! As well as his terrific sculptures of robots, he was an extraordinary collagist. And in 1947 in his I was a Rich Man’s Plaything the word Pop appears, helping to herald in a new era. By the time I got to know him properly, in the seventies, he was in his fifties, but had not lost any of his wayward ways. I will never forget the hurt look on Sir Norman Reid’s face, when Eduardo plonked a giant skip at the entrance of his Tate retrospective in 1971. The museum’s director certainly got the point, when Eduardo filled the skip with cut-up Paolozzi rejects. It was embarrassing. As it was when I introduced Frank Stella to Eduardo, the artist who had made

a screenprint of a monkey painting a Stella, a print of which I was the publisher. Bruce McLean was born twenty years after Eduardo, in Glasgow. Less the reprobate, more the King’s personal joker. Just like his senior brother in art, he too makes sculptures, books, prints and ceramics. But Bruce has added performance art, theatre and film. He is still quite capable of making vicious fun of the art establishment and society in general, and also get away with it. With his contagious charm and wit and enormous inventiveness. When I began to work with Henry Moore in the eighties, I am quite sure that the giant sculptor was fully aware of Bruce’s photograph of himself lounging in a dozen Moore-like poses. It is utterly brilliant and hilarious. Working with these two ends of art world society could well be daunting and schizophrenic, but somehow it works. And the Henry Moore Foundation remains extremely supportive of this artist and his work. The artworld maverick recently made a short video of himself dining with a Moore sculpture, the film ending with the artist staring into his cappuccino, with an extremely rude word in the froth. That film, and especially this last scene made this prude laugh so much that his sides ached. By the way, Mavericks they may well be, but two of the most generous and kind and gentle men I have worked with and I am so delighted to be linked with both of them. Neither suffer fools gladly.

Bruce McLean Untitled 2013 Ink, card and painted collage on paper, Edition of 10 101.6 x 80 cms (40 x 31 1/2 ins) ÂŁ 1,400 $ 1,800

Eduardo Paolozzi Avant Garde 1971 Screenprint, Edition of 25 76.2 x 58.42 cms (30 x 23 ins) Â£ 2,000 $ 2,590

I Yellow lawn with statue

IV Four Bushes

III Curved Hedge

My brother introduced me to Ivor Abrahams, back in 1959. I was a schoolboy at the time. Ivor lived two streets away from our parents’ house in Willesden. I would very often go to the shambolic home, on one floor of this big house in Chatsworth Road. At the far end of his ramshackle garden you would eventually get to this large shed, filled with plaster, wax, saws, chisels, hammers, wire – and sculptures, completed or in progress. It was a magic retreat for me. Also, he was a real bohemian, a true artist. One day I desperately wanted a sculpture he had made. It was in bronze and was entitled Gorgophone, who was the daughter of Perseus in Ancient Greek mythology. It was forty pounds and I gave him five pounds a month for eight months. All of my entire pocket money at that time. I eventually got it home, lugged it upstairs to my privacy, my bedroom, and it lived with my collection of Jazz records, my photo by Karsh of my hero, Ernest Hemingway and I placed it just by Ode to a Grecian Urn by Keats, which I hand wrote on cardboard. In 1969, I was now a publisher of fine prints, Ivor would make an extraordinary and magical series of five screenprints, which we named The Garden Suite. The success of this set was staggering and they were sold out in weeks. Privacy Plots followed a few months later with equal critical and commercial success. This was the beginning of an exceptionally productive relationship. We remained friends until he died in 2015.

Ivor Abrahams The Garden Suite 1970 Screenprint, Edition of 75, Set of 5 58 x 78 cms (22 3/4 x 30 1/2 ins) Each £ 700 Each $ 900

Ivor Abrahams The Privacy Plots: Brick Post with Hedge 1970 Screenprint, Edition of 75, Set of 5 57 x 78.5 cms (22 3/8 x 31 ins) Â£ 1,200 $ 1,550

Ivor Abrahams The Privacy Plots: Flower Garden 1970 Screenprint, Edition of 75, Set of 5 57 x 78.5 cms (22 3/8 x 31 ins) Â£ 1,200 $ 1,550

I began my life as an art dealer in 1968, when I was broke and living in New York and trying to get by. I fell into that world after a career as a journalist with ambitions to become the new Ernest Hemingway. Anyway, life can take huge twists and turns. I returned to London in 1969 to become an art dealer, primarily in publishing limited edition prints. Within months I was doing rather well, publishing and distributing Robyn Denny, Richard Smith, Andy Warhol, Ivor Abrahams, and many others. One day a young artist arrived at my fourth floor walk-up in Mayfair’s glamorous Mount Street. It was actually on the small size, a filing cupboard, which I sub-let from a firm of architects, at ten pounds a week, including the use of their secretary.

Anyway, the artist had a portfolio under his arm. I thought he had better show me them, even if I would not be in the slightest bit interested. I said I would publish two etchings in editions of twentyfive and, selling them out in days. I asked him to come back with that portfolio. That was fifty years ago and William Tillyer and I have gone on to publish a couple of hundred images. I also, very soon into our friendship, became his painting dealer. The prints continue to sell at a pace, as do the superb watercolours which he produces in large numbers. The paintings, the symphonies, which are tough and demanding on the eye, remain a challenge to me and all, with an enlightened art lover here and there, but gold doesn’t appear that easily, otherwise it would take on a different meaning.

William Tillyer Mrs. Lumsden’s 1971 Etching, Edition of 25 56 x 73.7 cms (22 x 29 ins) £ 800 $ 1040

William Tillyer A Furnished Landscape: High Force 1974 Screenprint, Set of 25, Edition of 90 Paper size: 90.5 x 68.5 cms (35 5/8 x 27 ins) Â£ 750 $ 970

William Tillyer Living in Arcadia II 1991 Embossed intaglio print with hand colouring, Edition of 47 114.3 x 132.1 cms (45 x 52 ins) ÂŁ 3,500 $ 4,520

Robert Graham Untitled (Figures on White Ground, Small) 1971 Lithograph, Edition of 25 38 x 42.5 cms (15 x 16.8 ins) ÂŁ 700 $ 900

Ed Moses was naturally so generous that he would give you the shirt off his back. Once I was in his studio in Santa Monica in the early seventies and he was painting away, with me watching on. He had this terrific shirt on, multi-coloured stripes with studs for buttons. He was always a really cool dresser. I told him I thought the shirt was just great. He popped open the studs and gave me the shirt off his back, and simply continued with the painting, bare-chested. He was such a free spirit and his generosity seemed without limits. If he liked you, he would really like you. If he didn’t like someone, they certainly knew it. The generosity, and unbounding energy, would be reflected in his paintings – always exciting, always beautiful, always in motion. We all miss him a lot. I only discovered the other day, that he kept all those letters I sent him. He could have been a big art star – if he actually wanted to be, and also if he wasn’t such a maverick. Of course I love him for that.

Ed Moses London 72’ (3 sheets, yellow grid & red & yellow lines, green wash) 1973 Lithograph on japanese paper, Edition of 50 58.4 x 80 cms (23 x 31 1/2 ins)

It was quite a thrilling experience, to go out to Los Angeles in the dead of winter in London, to sunshine and palm trees and ocean. That was 1970. I took a bus – and NOBODY takes a bus – down to Western Avenue, to an enclave where three cool guys from Oklahoma had moved to the city to find their way in the newish art scene of Los Angeles. They were Joe Goode, Jerry McMillan and Ed Ruscha.

Ed was the humorist, recording our times as fluently as Mark Twain. Joe was the poet and dreamer. They were as close as brothers. I didn’t actually find the bus journey much of a problem, if you learn the times and the direction. But being there was an inspiration and an education on light and space, and on spirit. In fact it was by interviewing The Beach Boys that I learned such things and here were three artists living out the dream.

Although I did make prints with Jerry, it was the other two who I mainly published in those early years of the nineteen seventies. They would be in and out of each others’ studios, just as they had once been in Oklahoma.

We would make wonderful art, a kind I had never seen before, and the memories of those times, the sunsets, the cloudless skies, the rides to the beach, eating tacos, those memories of happiness, will live with me forever and ever. I miss Ed and Joe and L.A.

Joe Goode Untitled (small orange photo on peach and blue background) 1971 Screenprint, Edition of 50 46 x 74 cms (18.11 x 29.13 ins) £ 1,200 $ 1,550

Ed Ruscha Two Jumping Fish 1980 Etching on R.K.Burt paper, Edition of 55 49.5 x 99 cms (19 1/2 x 39 ins) Â£ 6,000 $ 7,700

Leon Kossoff Outside Kilburn Underground

Leon Kossoff The Booking Hall

1984 Etching with aquatint, Edition of 15 59.1 x 66.7 cms (23.3 x 26.3 ins)

1982 Etching. Edition of 100 41.3 x 35.6 cms (16.25 x 14 ins)

£ 2,000 $ 2,600

£ 800 $ 1,040

The miserablist and the actor. Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach are two former students of the great British painter David Bomberg. Both went on to have big careers and receive a lot of success. Leon makes deep and powerful paintings of subjects close to his heart, his aged parents, his local railway station, the local church from his childhood, the local swimming pool. Not the most glamorous of subjects, and with not even the slightest intention to make them glamorous or appealing. They are moments of passionate memories and inner feelings. I have held Leon in the highest esteem ever since I interviewed him for The Willesden Chronicle in my teens. All the prints I published with him contain that same honesty. They may not be cheerful but they are deeply felt and truthful. Frank, who originally set out in life to be an actor, has forged a 60 year career by producing paintings of thick, thick paint, in that respect just like his friend Leon. I suppose I just find more of the wonders of life in Leonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pictures, although both of them are artists of exceptionally high quality and merit.

Frank Auerbach from the top right Gerda Boehm 1981 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) Lucian Freud 1981 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) R.B. Kitaj 1980 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) Joe Tilson 1980 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) £ 5,000 $ 6,460 Leon Kossoff 1980 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) Julia 1981 Etching, Edition of 50 39 x 33 cms (15 1/2 x 13 ins) £ 5,000 $ 6,460 81

Michael Heindorff came from Braunschweig in Germany to be closer to William Turner. We made set after set of great prints, of Braunschweig, of Paris, of Rome, of the landscape of England. He also produced an absolutely stunning series of etchings of his Butler’s Wharf studio building’s interior, which he realised would one day be destroyed. He was so right unfortunately. It is now very fashionable and filled with many restaurants, good ones though. Karin and I were having dinner with Charles and Doris Saatchi, who we would see virtually every day at that time. That evening I noticed a new acquisition – a series of small paintings of chairs by Michael, just out of the Royal College of Art. I loved them and I told Charles. The next day the young artist called me and we worked intensely together for years on end. At a certain moment I felt Michael had lost his way a bit and we did begin to drift apart. By this time, to be fair, I had drifted away from so much art that I had once felt so strongly about, and within time I had entered my American phase, returning to the very world in which I had begun. Michael is a wonderful person and an excellent painter, watercolourist, printmaker and we should all see more work by him nowadays. I don’t see him enough. He will be seventy this year. I do feel badly about our parting of the ways, although you just can’t do everything!

Michael Heindorff Affirmations 1 1980 Etching, Edition of 30 69 x 96 cms (27 x 37 7/8 ins) £ 200 $ 260

Michael Sandle was a real tough guy who made huge and powerful and outrageous bronze sculptures. I met him through Ivor Abrahams. Two brilliant sculptors, so different in character, although bonded through their deep sculptural passions. Michael made an absolutely stunning and brooding series of dark, dark etchings full of mythic monuments. Michael always came across as rugged and austere and intense. When Ivor died, Michael delivered a deep and heartfelt speech. He stopped several times, to collect his thoughts and hold back his emotions from showing through. He always seemed like he was formerly in the RAF and one of his fellow pilots had gone missing. In actual fact, Michaelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father served in the Royal Navy and he was christened on the HMS Ark Royal. His single image, for my For John Constable portfolio, which was of Old Sarum, a Constable theme, was perhaps the most powerful in that series. Now he is in his eighties and we really donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hear enough about him these days. A bit of a loner in the feeble art world, probably because his beliefs are too true.

Michael Sandle Submarine Monument/ Sunken Version 1976 Etching, Edition of 75 58.4 x 73.7 cms (23 x 29 ins)

David Hockney is famous and has been famous for over half a century. That is a big achievement, all by itself. Sadly, fame comes at a high price and it must be difficult to resist so much attention and false platitudes and endless flattery. By the mid-seventies I worried that David was losing his way. I found the endless stream of new passions, reverse perspective, cubistic photography, fax drawings, iPad paintings, a big concern. I quietly and gently mentioned why doesn’t he do that marvelous line drawing he was so wonderful at. He plaintively replied, “I’ve done enough of that, luv.” Who was I to comment on what he should or should not do? What did I know? Now, in hindsight, after all those years, I suppose I was either right or I was wrong. I personally don’t connect enough with the various paths he has taken, although the work, in whichever medium he chooses to take, is hugely accomplished, thrilling in its impact, inventive and varied enough – but just not something that speaks to me the way the work of the sixties and the first half of the seventies did. I am looking for depth nowadays and I find David is looking for something which is exceptionally glamorous and colourful. We made a few etchings together and I loved hanging out with him and I loved the world he opened up for me. David is a gigantic talent, and that surely can be enough.

David Hockney Le Nid Du Duc 1971 Print 60.5 x 45.5 cms (24 x 17 7/8 ins)

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