Print of the Day!! Sat, July 23, 2022, is by American printmaker and 7 time Academy Award winning Art Director Richard W. Day (1896-1972). $450.00

Print of the Day!! Saturday, July 23, 2022, is by American printmaker and 7 time Academy Award winning Art Director Richard W. Day (1896-1972). The Annex Galleries represents Richard Day's original prints.

"Mexican Plaza" is a planographic print, a lithograph, done around 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression. The image measures 7-1/2 x 10-1/8 inches. This impression is pencil signed, titled, and editioned "12/14" by the artist in the lower margin. It was printed by the artist and Los Angeles Master Printer Paul Roeher on a sheet of ivory Basingwerk Parchment that measures 9-3/4 x 13 inches. The gallery inventory number RD135.

This scarce lithograph by American printmaker and 7 time Academy Award winner Richard W. Day is available from the gallery for $450.00.

Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law. A detailed condition report is available upon request.

Day's lithography is featured in Merle Armitage's The Lithographs of Richard Day, published by E. Weyhe in 1932. In his introduction, Carl Zigrosser praised Day: "His work must be reckoned with. Here is a new lithographer, fresh in design, original in point of view, enlivened with a sense of humor. Outstanding among his recent works, I think, are 'Hut, New Mexico'; 'Hotel at Cuernavaca'; and 'Mexican Landscape' for their striking juxtapositions and arrangement of plastic form." This Modernist composition of a plaza in Mexico was drawn mostly using the side of the litho crayon.

Richard Welsted Day, printmaker and art director, was born in Victoria, British Columbia on May 9, 1896. His education consisted of private tutoring, a natural talent for drawing which he developed without professional lessons, and voracious reading. After serving with the Canadian army in World War I, he returned to Victoria and began his career as a commercial artist.

In 1920, Day arrived in Hollywood hoping to find a career in the emerging motion picture industry. Befriended by director Erich Von Stroheim, he was hired as a scene painter for the film Foolish Wives but was soon elevated to art director. The pursuit of his new career led him to MGM and then to 20th Century Fox where he became Supervising Art Director.

Day worked on hundreds of films which earned him twenty Academy Award nominations and his genius was awarded seven times with the coveted Oscar for Dark Angel, (1935); Dodsworth, (1936); How Green Was My Valley, (1941); This Above All, (1942); My Gal Sal, (1942); A Streetcar Named Desire, (1951); and On the Waterfront, (1954). He designed and built some of the largest sets of the era and, in 1935, during the Great Depression, Day was the highest-paid art director in Hollywood.

During the 1930s Day produced a number of very fine lithographs which were professionally printed by Paul Roeher in Los Angeles. These were shown at Jake Zeitlin's Book Shop in Los Angeles and, in 1932, Merle Armitage wrote The Lithographs of Richard Day. Day's lithographs were exhibited in 1935 at the California-Pacific International Exposition in San Diego and are represented in the collections of the Library of Congress and the National Gallery.

Richard W. Day died in Woodland Hills, California on May 23, 1972.

To purchase this work, see other works or read a biography for Richard W. Day use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/artist/531/Day/Richard

Use this link to view our complete inventory on our website https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q=