Ralph Fasanella "May Day" Signed Screenprint

About the Item

Ralph Fasanella "May Day" Signed Screenprint "May Day" signed screenprint by New York folk artist Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997). Fasanella was a self-taught outsider artist and renowned painter of "social reality." He created large, colorful and intricate paintings of working-class culture and American politics. This piece is pencil-signed lower right and dated 1974. Edition 199/210. Ralph Fasanella celebrated the common man and tackled complex issues of postwar America in colorful, socially minded paintings. The most lasting lessons he learned from his Italian immigrant parents were that family and community came before personal gain, that younger generations stood on the shoulders of those who came before them, and that all Americans should fight for their rights, themes that would later resonate in his works. Fasanella took up painting in 1945, but did not devote himself to it full-time until the 1970s. Untrained as an artist, Fasanella developed an astute and accessible style that reflected his affiliation with and commitment to the working class. He viewed painting as an extension of his union activity and his alternately subtle and brash paintings functioned simultaneously as memorial documents, didactic tools, and rallying cries, making the possibility of a better society palpable to his own community and others like it. These paintings, often large in scale and laden with symbolic imagery, deal with themes of struggle, endurance, social justice, family and community. He felt strongly about the need to remember the sacrifices of previous generations, inscribing the phrase “Lest We Forget” on several of his paintings. As early as 1947, Fasanella was exhibited alongside the top social realist painters of the day. His works hung in both galleries and union halls and effectively bridged a divide between socially aware, self-taught artists and their trained counterparts. Measurements are as follows: 50" in width x 36" in height x 1" in depth

Creator:

Ralph Fasanella (Artist)

Dimensions:

Height: 36 in (91.44 cm)Width: 50 in (127 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)

Style:

Folk Art (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Paint,Plexiglass,Wood,Hand-Painted

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1970-1979