Tool Box, 1966
Laquer, 23 1/2" x 19 1/2" each
Tool Box, 1966
Suite of 10 Screenprints with Mixed Media and 2 texts, 23 1/2" x 19 1/2" each
Tool Box, 1966
1 of 10 Screenprints with Mixed Media, 23 1/2" x 19 1/2" each
Big Red Wrench in a Landscape, 1973
Color Lithograph, 30" x 22"
The New French Tools #3 - for Pep, 1984
Hand-Ground Etching with Drypoint, 42" x 30 1/4"
Ten Winter Tools II, 1973-1989
Hand-colored Lithographs, 26" x 20"
Atheism, 1986
Hand-colored Lithograph, 68" x 47"
Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1935. He served as a bridge between Pop art and a new generation of figurative expressionism, and continues to refine his technical virtuosity in paintings, sculptures, drawings and graphics. From 1953 to 1955 he studied at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Boston Museum School, Massachusetts, and in 1957 he received his B.F.A. from the University of Ohio. In 1959 he exhibited with Claes Oldenburg at the Judson Gallery, his first New York show. In 1964 Dine was included in the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York gave Dine his first retrospective in 1970 when he was only 35, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a print retrospective in 1978. In 1980 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Dine developed a love of tools at his family’s hardware store, and they have remained a favorite subject throughout his career. In recent years he has added skulls, trees, gates, and the torso of Venus to his lexicon of images, and his work has been marked by a heightened sense of drama and sensual gestural surfaces.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.