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Last updated: 6/23/2019
Home / Gallery Tour 1 / Gallery News / Gallery Tour 2 / Artists

Pierre Alechinsky: Vulcanologies I-VII

Our Alechinsky pages are arranged thematically and/or by series.
Clicking on a link will bring you to one or more pages on that subject.

The Dog King / Boxes / Central Park / Critters / Drawings / Faces / Grandes Marges / Hors Texte
Labyrinths / Landscapes / Maps / Mark-Making / Screamers / Snakes / Transformations / Venice / Volcanoes

Alechinsky Specials
In the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Snake comes every twelve years. For Alechinsky, a founding member of COBRA (an acronym for the cities that contributed members to the group, COpenhagen, BRussels, and Amsterdam), the Year of the Snake can be an auspicious one. In 1977, also the Year of the Snake, Alechinsky was awarded the first Andrew W. Mellon Prize for Painting and executed one of the prints we are featuring, also called The Year of the Snake. In 1989, Alechinsky's Guggenheim retrospective which had been traveling in Europe for almost two years had finally come to its end, and we celebrated with a large exhibition of his works; in 2001, we celebrated the Year of the Snake with another large show of Alechinsky's original prints and several drawings; in 2013, the Year of the Snake will come again, but we may not be able to wait until then. In the meantime, we are featuring lots of Alechinsky's favorite images: Central Park, snakes, volcanoes, gardens, dog-kings, smiling crocodiles and sea monsters, and people existing as best they can in a world that often seems to invite extreme emotional responses. (Sometimes you just want to scream!) Still, the central act of Alechinsky's art is the making of marks on a sheet of paper, on a canvas, on a copperplate, on a lithographic stone: for that is what distinguishes artists (visual or verbal) from destroyers. Or perhaps we might need to include in the list of things that make an artist (or a maker, as artists were called in Elizabethan England) two key qualities: a sense of the ridiculous in both its comic and tragic guises and the strength to laugh both at it and with it. As a case in point, we might consider the volcano, a fearsome thing able to destroy a city in a matter of moments. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google suggests that no one has a complete set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs, and Spaightwood Galleries, who will. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. In coming weeks we will be adding a number of additional pieces to these pages. If you want to know as soon as the additions are done, please send me an email or give me a call.
Vulcanologies I (A. 453). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a complete set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Sold only as a set of 7. Image size: 570x440mm. Mat size: 30x24. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies II (A. 454). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies III (A. 455). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies IV (A. 456). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies V (A. 457). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies VI (A. 458). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
Vulcanologies VII (A. 459). Original color lithograph, 1970. 90 signed & numbered impressions on wove paper. Alechinsky, a lover of volcanoes, has done many paintings, drawings, and prints of them in all of their spectacular glory. The seven lithographs he produced for Vulcanologies are among his finest renderings of the terror and splendor of a natural disaster. They are also examples of his delight in the created world and of his sense of its beauty and strangeness. This is apparently one of the rarest sets in Alechinsky's print oeuvre. A very quick survey of Google shows that we are number one, that no one else seems to have a set except for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who, of course, will not sell theirs. We also found that no complete sets have been sold at auction since computerized listings began to be kept. Consequently, we have decided to sell the set only as a whole. Image size: 570x440mm. Set price: Please call or email for current pricing information.
The winner of the first Andrew W. Mellon Prize for Painting (1977) and the French Grand Prix National for painting in 1984, Alechinsky has been recognized in recent years as one of the most significant living artists. (The art market has also noticed his stature: one of his paintings sold at auction about 15 years ago for over Please call or email for current pricing information,000.)

Alechinsky was just barely out of his teens when he burst onto the art scene as one of the original members of the COBRA group, and over the years he has emerged as one of the most imaginative and witty artists of our times. Alechinsky fans are everywhere. John Russell, who in 1986-87 devoted three separate columns in The New York Times to Alechinsky, sees him as "a man of strange blameless passions. Decorated invoices, worthless stock certificates, obsolete air-force navigational charts and ancient hand-written archival materials spark his imagination. . . . He has a taste for nature’s upheavals." Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist for whom "the garden is the center of the world," has described Alechinsky as a man who "paints gardens. . . . He knows that the history of gardens is the history of all of us. . . . Alechinsky . . . chooses any of the forked paths of the manicured gardens at Blois or Hampton Court and then transforms them, ferociously, into the savage gardens of the primitive mind, the original unity of dream and awareness, reason and imagination, desire and reality." Indeed, it may be that it is his dream of recovering that lost unity that makes him, as The Times called him, "a poet of entanglement, [who] resolutely turns the emphasis away from himself, preferring to act rather as historian and referee than as autobiographer. . . . His touch is light, his thought rapid, his view of the world as sharp as it is benign. There is no better companion, and not many who keep us so consistently amused and are so generous with their findings."

Alechinsky has had major retrospectives at The Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh (in 1977, the Year of the Snake), the Guggenheim Museum in NY (987; it then traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, the Hannover Kunsteverin, and the Musée royal d'Art moderne in Brussels), the Palais des Beaux-Arts and the Musées Royeaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Boymans-von-Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, and museums in Aalborg, Brême, Copenhagen, Darmstadt, Des Moines, Düsseldorf, Gordes, Hanover, Marseille, Metz, Mexico City, Munich, St. Paul de Vence, Toronto, and Zurich. The most recent encyclopedic Alechinsky museum shows of which I know were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris (1998; a modified version of this show traveled in 1999 to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (Monteray, Mexico), and the Museo José Luis Cuivas, Mexico City), IVAM Centre Julio González (Valencia, Spain, 2000); "Alechinsky" (Ostend: Musée d'art moderne, 2000), "Alechinsky:Dessins de cinq décennes" (Paris: Centre Georgres Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne, Cabinet d'art graphique, 2004), Alechinsky" (Carl-Hennig Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum, Herning, Denmark), "Alechinsky de A à Y' (Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 2007-2008: see pages 283-290 for a list of all of Alechinsky's one person shows).

Alechinsky's most recent print retrospectives were held at the Museum of Modern Art (NY, 1981; organized by the MoMA, before it came to NY, it showed at the San Jose Museum of Art, the University of Houston, The Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Whichta State University, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), the Centre de la Gravure et de l'image imprimiée, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Moutier, Switzaerland (1982), "Litos Perpetra: Pierre Alechinsky" (Museuo de Belles-Artes, Caracas, 1990), "Pierre Alechinsky: Carta Canta: mostra antologica dell'opera grafica 50-90" (Bologna), "Pierre Alechinsky: Graphics Retrospective (Taipai, 1992), Alechinsky: Labor de imprenta de cinco décadas" (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo y Instituto de Artes Graficas, 1996-97), "Pierre Alechinsky: Noir sur Blanc 1947-1997" (Geneva, Cabinet des esampres du Musée d'Art et d'HIstoire), "Alechinsky, 50 ans d'imprimerie (Centre de la Gravure et de l'image imprimée de la Comunitée Française de Belgique, La Louverie, Belgium, 2000; the show then traveled to Poznan, Warsaw, Krakow, Quebec, Metz, Riom, and the Somme), "Alechinsky: obra grafica" (traveling show: Institut français de Valencia, Institut français de Madrid, Institut français de Barcelona, Salamanca: Palacio de Abrantes, Universidad de Salamanca), "Alechinsky: Estampes" (Monte Carlo, 2000), Pierre Alechinsky: Estampes" (Rieupeyroux, France: 2000), "Pierre Alechinsky, estampes, 1975-2000" (Fougères: Galerie des Urbanistes, 2000), "Primeurs et retrouvilles—Lithographies de Pierre Alechinsky" (Paris: Editions Ateliers Clot, 2001), "Pierre Alechinsky: Morsures et autres gravures" (Strasburg: Misée d'art moderne et contemporain, 2002), Pierre Alechinsky: 50 jahr grafisch werk" (Wortegen, Belgium, 2002), "Pierre Alechinsky: lithographies réalisées aux Éditions Atelier Clot á Paris," (Aux-les Bains, Musée Faure, 2003), "Pierre Alechinsky: papier, cuivre, et pierre, depuis 1947" (Auvers-sur-Oise: Musée Daubigny, 2004), "Les Impressions de Pierre Alechinsky" (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale dee France, 2005), "Pierre Alechinsky: Encres et espampes, 1969-2004" (Nice: Galerie d'art moderne et contemporain, 2005).

Select Bibliography: General works: Daniel Abadie and Willy Van Den Bussche, Pierre Alechinsky (Ostend: PMMK, 2000); Pierre Alechinsky, Cent vingt dessins, donation de l'artiste (Brussels: Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels 1973); Pierre Alechinsky, Divers faits (Vevey: Musee Janisch, 2000); Pierre Alechinsky, Au Pays de l'encre (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1998), Pierre Alechinsky, Dotremont et Cobra-foret (Paris: Galilee, 1988); Pierre Alechinsky, Drawings and Prints (Jerusalem: Musee d'Israel, 1970); Pierre Alechinsky, Hoirie Cobra (Caen: L'Échoppe, 1990); Pierre Alechinsky, Ideotraces (Paris: Editions Denoel, 1966); Pierre Alechinsky, Le bureau de titre (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1983); Pierre Alechinsky, Le test du titre: 6 planches et 61 titreurs d'elite (Paris: Yves Riviere Editeur, 1974); Pierre Alechinsky, Margin and Center (NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1987); Pierre Alechinsky, New Work: Pains de terre émaillé, Flora Danica drawings, Revalorisations (NY: Andre Emmerich Gallery, 1991); Pierre Alechinsky, Notes sur Orsay (Caen: L'Échoppe, 1989); Pierre Alechinsky, Paintings and Writings (Pittsburgh: Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, 1977); Pierre Alechinsky, Pierre Alechinsky: Werke 1958-1968 (Düsseldorf. Kunstverein fur die Rheinlande und Westfalen, 1969); Pierre Alechinsky, Reponses a un questionnaire (Caen: L'Echoppe, 1987); Pierre Alechinsky, The Future of Property. Fourteen Specimens re-evaluated by Pierre Alechinsky (NY: Lefebre Gallery, 1970); Pierre Alechinsky and Georges Duby, Alechinsky (Zurich: Maeght Zurich, 1980); Pierre Alechinsky, and Amos Kenan, Les Tireurs de Langue (Paris: Yves Riviere Editeur, 1974); Pierre Alechinsky and Karel Appel, Two-brush paintings. Their Poems by Hugo Claus. Foreword by Christian Dotrement (Paris: Yves Riviere Editeur, 1980); Karel Appel & Pierre Alechinsky, Encres a deux pinceaux (Paris: Yves Riviere Editeur, 1978); Alain Bosquet, Alechinsky (Paris: Le musee de poche 1971); Jacques Busse, Pierre Alechinsky (Chicago: Arts Club Of Chicago, 1965); Pierre Descargues, Alechinsky Bouches et Grilles (Paris: Galerie Maeght Lelong 1986); Christian Dotrement et al., Appel et Alechinsky: Encres à deux pinceaux, peintures, etc. (Saint Paul De Vence: Fondation Maeght, 1982); Georges Duby, Alechinsky (Zurich: Maeght Zurich 1980); Jacques Dupin, Alechinsky: Laves Emaillees (Paris: Galerie Lelong, 1988); Petit journal: Made in France 1947-1997 (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1997); Jacques Putnam, Alechinsky (Paris: Celiv, 1990); Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pierre Daix et al., Pierre Alechinsky (Valencia: IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, 2000); Alain Robbe-Grillet, John Yau, Daniel Abadie and Pierre Daix, Pierre Alechinsky (Paris: Jeu de Paume, 1998); Michel Sicard, Alechinsky Sur Rhone (Paris: Galerie Lelong, 1990); Michel Sicard, ed. Pierre Alechinsky: Extraits pour traits (Paris: Galilée, 1989); Giorgio Soavi, Alechinsky: XXXVI Biennale de Venise, Pavillon Belge (Venice: Venice Biennale, 1972).

Prints: Pierre Alechinsky, Alechinsky a l'imprimerie: 150 estampes (Paris: le Musee national d'art moderne, 1975, 1977); Pierre Alechinsky, Alechinsky. (Rome: Edizioni 2RC, 1988); Pierre Alechinsky, Aux petits soins (Paris: Atelier Clot, 1989); Pierre Alechinsky, Ces robes qui m'evoquaient Venise. (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1988); Pierre Alechinsky, L'avenir de la propriéte (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1992); Pierre Alechinsky, Communication: 16 Manifestations d'Hypertrophie Calligraphique (Vouvière (Belgique): Editions du Daily-Bul, 1967); Pierre Alechinsky et al., The Complete Books: A Reasonable Catalogue (Antwerpen: Ceuleers & Van de Velde, 2002); Pierre Alechinsky and Michel Butor, Le Chien Roi (Paris: Daniel Lelong Editeur, 1984); Franck Bordas et al, Les Impressions de Pierre Alechinsky (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2005); Michel Butor et Michel Sicard, Pierre Alechinsky: Frontières et Bordures (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1984); Michel Butor et Michel Sicard, Alechinsky: Travaux d'Impression (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1992); Michel Draguet et al., Alechinsky from A to Y (Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo, 2007); Rainer Michael Mason et al, Pierre Alechinsky: Noir sur blanc (Geneva: Caninet des Estampes du Musee D'Art et D'Histoire, 1998); Yves Riviere, Pierre Alechinsky: Les estampes de 1946 a 1972 (Paris: Yves Riviere Editeur, 1973).
Pierre Alechinsky, Paintings and Writings (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum, 1977). Published on the occasion of the award of the first Mellon Prize to Alechinsky, the deluxe edition of 100 is signed by Alechinsky. The book contains essays by Alechinsky on artists like Joan Miró and Bram van Velde, stories by Alechinsky, a photoducmentation of COBRA, and a good selection of Alechinsky's most important early paintings. The work is decorated by reproductions of drawings done especially for the volume. Although unsigned copies are presently selling for as much as Please call or email for current pricing information in the used book market, we are pleased to be able to offer several used copies for Please call or email for current pricing information.00 each.

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