Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: John Lennon, (from the Portraits of Luminaries Collection)
Year created: 2010
Medium: Original Mixed Media Painting on Canvas, with Applied Collage
Edition: Original Unique Artwork, Hand-Signed by the Artist
Height (inches): 26-1/2
Width (inches): 20
Depth (inches): 5/8
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This original work on canvas comes stretched and ready for display, with a picture wire on reverse.
Description of piece:
Sid Maurer’s mastery as a fine artist is evident in his strikingly accurate, personal and intuitive portraits of luminaries.
This original mixed media artwork on canvas captures John Lennon in an intimate closeup portrait, conveying Lennon’s deeply intellectual and pensive character. Bold, textural application of paint and use of graphics as compositional elements bring added depth and dimensionality to the artwork. Added collage elements are unique to this artwork, being the only work of Maurer’s Portraits of Luminaries Collection to incorporate collage. Maurer’s portraits capture the essence of his subjects, and synthesize Maurer’s artistic vision with his technical and compositional roots in graphic design.
Best known and world-renowned as a Beatle, and for his profound musical genius, Lennon also expanded his work into other media by participating in numerous films, authoring books and creating minimalistic yet expressive visual artworks.
The artwork is hand-signed by the artist in a prominently large signature in silver, lower right. Measuring 26-1/2” in height x 20” width x 5/8" depth, this original work on canvas comes freshly stretched and ready for display.
John Lennon is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, which comes in a clear, protective archival sleeve.
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.