James Francis Gill, the popular American Pop-Artist shows his newest works. The Cowboy Artist from Texas would like to delight us with his editions and unique pieces of art.
His paintings, which are often based on photographs, offer an unusually personal approach to the biggest icons of the 1950s and 60s. Gill’s art is diverse, unique in the use of colors, timeless and universal.
His paintings from the 1960s have a socially critical character. In the 1980s and 1990s, he combined abstraction and figuration in a breathtaking way.
One of Gill’s great muses – as well as for many other artists in the 1960s – was the famous Marilyn Monroe. The group of Pop Art artists who depicted Marilyn Monroe in their works in the 1960s, thereby establishing her as an art icon, is of special quality. In a period of time between 1962 and 1967, this exquisite circle took up the actress as an important artistic theme. Monroe’s death reinforced the significance of Pop Art and continues to reverberate to the present day.
In American Pop Art, James Francis Gill and Andy Warhol, besides James Rosenquist, were the firsts to create significant works directly after their deaths. Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Indiana followed.
James Francis Gill, now almost 89 years old, is the only living representative of the elite circle of the first Pop Art artists. The exhibition series James Francis Gill – Marilyn Monroe Paintings shows unique works and serigraphs by the American artist.
The James Francis Gill – Marilyn Monroe Paintings exhibition goes back to the beginnings of American Pop Art in 1962 and proves that, over sixty years later, Gill still manages to authentically depict Marilyn Monroe as one of the defining art icons of our time in his late work.
Today, his works can be found in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art of the Ludwig Foundation, among others.
Gill’s works were regularly shown at MoMA in the mid-1960s besides the works by Edward Hopper, Robert Rauschenberg, Pablo Picasso, Heinz Mack, Alexander Calder, Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns and others. Museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Ludwig Foundation have also included Gill in their collections.
At this exhibition the artist presents the famous Marilyn Triptych. This intimate and seductive work, which has become one of the artist’s most famous, has been made the subject of a commemorative edition. The occasion for this artwork was the death of the famous actress Marylin Monroe. Gill was in Los Angeles at the time and was inspired by the images of the artist’s death notice. It was published in the August 1962 issue of “Life Magazine”.
The newly released graphic edition Marilyn’s Triptych is the result of a collaboration between the Heilbronn-based publisher Premium Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The high-quality box set is published in a limited edition of just 62 copies.
James Francis Gill
Serigraph on 400g Hahnemühle paper
100,00 x 74,50 cm
62 + 10 E.A. + 3 P.P. + 5 Museum Proofs
2023
