ROBERT KIPNISS: Paintings and Poetry, 1950–1964

The book cover for Robert Kipniss features a detail of the 1951 oil painting titled Landscape in which soft green, orange, and red shapes blur together.
Artist Robert Kipniss, seen from the chest up, works behind his easel. In the background a second person looks at the ground.
In the foreground of this oil painting are a fork and knife painted in blue, while behind them are two large yellow grapefruit.
An oil painting has a blue-gray background and a red tabletop cast in blue shadow in the foreground. On the tabletop is a small knife and a collection of round orange, yellow, and red forms.
An oil painting shows three leafless trees seen through three architectural arches supported by narrow columns. In the background, behind the trees, are three more arches.
An oil painting includes several leafless trees and a gray house with no windows. Tree branches weave in front of and behind, the house. A green haze appears behind the house.
An oil painting shows a light green field that slopes up into a hillside. The field is dotted with small trees and hedges. The sky is light blue.
A painting of a village. Foliage painted in maroon, pink, and yellow-green surrounds several buildings including a church with a steeple. A rolling green hillside rises in the background.
In the foreground of this painting is a shadowy park path and tree trunks. The path leads toward a city street where two cars are parked and buildings are painted with blue, yellow, and gray facades.
The 1959 Robert Kipniss poem “White Dust on My Face” is typed in black letters on a white background.
The book cover for Robert Kipniss features a detail of the 1951 oil painting titled Landscape in which soft green, orange, and red shapes blur together.
Artist Robert Kipniss, seen from the chest up, works behind his easel. In the background a second person looks at the ground.
In the foreground of this oil painting are a fork and knife painted in blue, while behind them are two large yellow grapefruit.
An oil painting has a blue-gray background and a red tabletop cast in blue shadow in the foreground. On the tabletop is a small knife and a collection of round orange, yellow, and red forms.
An oil painting shows three leafless trees seen through three architectural arches supported by narrow columns. In the background, behind the trees, are three more arches.
An oil painting includes several leafless trees and a gray house with no windows. Tree branches weave in front of and behind, the house. A green haze appears behind the house.
An oil painting shows a light green field that slopes up into a hillside. The field is dotted with small trees and hedges. The sky is light blue.
A painting of a village. Foliage painted in maroon, pink, and yellow-green surrounds several buildings including a church with a steeple. A rolling green hillside rises in the background.
In the foreground of this painting is a shadowy park path and tree trunks. The path leads toward a city street where two cars are parked and buildings are painted with blue, yellow, and gray facades.
The 1959 Robert Kipniss poem “White Dust on My Face” is typed in black letters on a white background.

ROBERT KIPNISS: Paintings and Poetry, 1950–1964

$65.00

PREFACE BY: ROBERT KIPNISS
INTRODUCTION BY: MARSHALL N. PRICE
ESSAY BY: ROBIN MAGOWAN

Hardcover
10 x 12 inches, 144 pages
60 color plates + 32 black and white
ISBN: 978-0-9888557-2-4

$65 | £45 | €54

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This intriguing monograph of painter and printmaker Robert Kipniss is an intimate look at a memorable period in his life and career. Robert Kipniss: Paintings and Poetry, 1950–1964 is the result of many arduous months of revisiting his more-than-half-a-century-ago writing, poems that were stashed away and essentially forgotten. “Some of the poems are straightforward, some are infused with surreal irony, and some are angry,” says Kipniss in his candid and honest Preface. Thoughtful and articulate from conception to completion, his never-before-published poems are choreographed with his early paintings in this contemplation of the influential and foundational years from 1950 to 1964. “When I stopped writing [in 1961] my vision was no longer divided between word-thinking and picture-thinking: these approaches had merged and in expressing myself I was more whole,” reflects Kipniss in his retrospective musings.

Readers of this gorgeous volume are all the richer for catching a glimpse of an intensely personal segment of this accomplished artist’s private history. In an unambiguous assessment, Kipniss elaborates, “The most significant insight that arose in this undertaking…came when I began to collate reproductions of my paintings of the 1950s. I could clearly see that my work in the two mediums were from very differing parts of my psyche, and that while they were both in themselves completely engaged, they were not in any way together.” This written and visual account of previously unpublished poems and early paintings, which were critically acclaimed, are accompanied by two astute and illustrative essays that further enlighten.

Marshall N. Price is curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Academy Museum, New York. Award-winning poet Robin Magowan is based in Santa Fe. Among his numerous books are a travel collection, an autobiography, and volumes of poetry.