Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: Neil Armstrong (from the Portraits of Luminaries Collection)
Year created: 2010
Medium: Original Mixed Media Artwork on Wood Board
Edition: Original Unique Artwork, Hand-Signed by the Artist
Height (inches): 24
Width (inches): 20
This piece is unframed.
Signed twice by the artist
Signed Area: front & back
Also Titled and Dated on back
This piece is unframed.
Description of piece:
Sid Maurer’s mastery as a fine artist is evident in his strikingly accurate, personal and intuitive portraits of luminaries.
Imbued with warmth and vibrancy, Maurer’s portraits capture the essence of his subjects, and synthesize Maurer’s artistic vision with his technical and compositional roots in graphic design. Bold, visible paint texturing and layering bring added light, depth and dimensionality to the artwork.
An original mixed media painting on wood board, Maurer’s self-titled Neil Armstrong measures 24” in height x 20” width. Maurer's portrait depicts Astronaut Neil Armstrong in his NASA spacesuit, helmet in hands; completing the image are insignia detailing on Armstrong's spacesuit, Maurer's iconic graphic use of letters, and a large facsimile Neil Armstrong signature in the white lower field of the portrait.
The artwork is signed twice by the artist: first, on the front of the artwork, in a large signature in black, lower right, below Armstrong's even larger facsimile signature; and on the reverse, where Maurer has also titled and dated the work.
Neil Armstrong is accompanied by its original Certificate of Authenticity from Allan Rich, Sid Maurer’s gallerist and lifelong personal friend. In addition to representing artists with Hollywood ties, Allan Rich was himself a well-known character actor, author and acting coach. The COA includes a photograph of the artwork; a photograph of, and personal statement by, the artist; and is signed and dated by Allan Rich.
NEIL ARMSTRONG (1930-2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer, and the first person to walk on the Moon. When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Leading up to his historic moonwalk, Armstrong had first joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module Columbia.
Armstrong, along with Collins and Aldrin, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
Artist bio:
Sid Maurer's (1926-2017) long career spanned decades in the world of Art and Music, beginning at age seventeen when he was hired as Assistant Art Director at Columbia Records in New York City. When the music industry exploded, Maurer designed album covers and promotional material for popular artists, alongside Columbia Records colleague Andy Warhol. Maurer expanded his commercial art studio to tackle a wide range of projects for the music and film industries, while his striking artistic style developed, influenced by artists he met including Pollack and Rauschenberg.
Maurer left the empire of music and art that he had helped to build to focus on his passion: painting. In the last decade, his work has been shown in a wide variety of venues, including the Georgia Capitol, the Carnegie Museum and U.C.L.A. His commissioned artwork includes work for ESPN, MotorSport America Magazine, David Bowie, Boy George, and Donovan.
As a painter, Maurer created large mixed media pieces that were very much a product of his varied training and experience. His style combined bold, dynamic colors and strokes with painstaking layouts and typographical elements. The result is the unique blend of a painter's passion tempered with the calculating compositional eye of a graphic designer, exploring his themes through the use of bold subject matter, symbols and graphics.
