ALECHINSKY, PIERRE (Belgian, b. 1927) "Snake Fish." Original color lithograph, 1977. Edition of 100 signed and numbered impressions. Signed, L.R. and numbered "68/100." 12" x 8 ½" (sight); 21" x 17" (framed). Price Category: A

Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky worked mainly in France in a variety of media including painting, printmaking, and drawing. He joined the Jeune Peinture Belge in 1947 and two years later joined the COBRA group, of which he as a founding member. COBRA was an acronym for the three cities that contributed members to the group: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. The members of COBRA believed in creative diversity and held high hopes for a new postwar society and aesthetic. The group was active from 1948-52, when Alechinsky moved to Paris to explore new avenues for his art. His attachment to COBRA explains the origin of one of his favorite images, the snake, which appears as a design element in his art at various stages in his career. The year this lithograph was created, 1977, proved to be an auspicious year for Alechinsky, as he was awarded the first Andrew W. Mellon Prize for Painting. It so happened that 1977 was also "The Year of the Snake" according to the Chinese Calendar, and Alechinsky used the image as a personal icon to celebrate the fulfilment of his dreams as an artist and to honor the idealistic hopes of the group to which he was devoted as a young man. Alechinsky has had major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, Carneigie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and at museums in Brussels, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Munich, Toronto, and Zurich. He is one of the major forces in 20th Century abstract art, with work in over 40 museums. Provenance: Spaightwood Galleries, Upton, MA.

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