JACOB BEN AMI (Original Linocut from the Portfolio "Stage Folk")

New York: Lieber and Lewis, 1922. Original linocut, from an edition limited to 500 impressions. Alfred Frueh (1880-1968) began his art career in1903, drawing editorial cartoons and theatre caricatures for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He became a national figure when his 1907 satirical drawing of music hall star Fritzi Scheff was so offensive to her that she cancelled a scheduled performance in St. Louis. Frueh later became a cartoonist for the New York World, doing caricatures of leading Broadway personalities. In 1912 he mounted an exhibition of his caricatures for an exhibition at ""291"", the New York art gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, who praised the exhibition: "Frueh is to be congratulated for the delightful manner in which he has depicted his impressions of our entertainers, displaying a pictorial sense of line and color, an ability to seize the significant characters of each individual and emphasize them with a gentle if sometimes mordant irony." In 1922 Lieber and Lewis published STAGE FOLK, a portfolio of 41 Original Frueh linocut caricatures, limited to 500 copies. Perhaps influenced by the art of his friend Henri Matisse, Frueh learned to capture the essence of his subjects in just a few lines and an occasional dash of color. Upon viewing the Stage Folk linocuts at the Anderson Gallery, art critic Willard Huntington Wright commented, "He deals in salients almost exclusively, and so keen is his observation that he is able to sum up a personality in a single feature or lineament." Frueh's caricature perfectly captured the brooding presence of the Russian-American actor Jacob Ben-Ami, who starred on Broadway for 40 years. The minimalist approach of Frueh's linocuts remains the ideal for today's caricaturists. Al Frueh's linocuts were in the collection of Jules Feiffer and can be found in the National Portrait Gallery and the Alfred Bendiner Memorial Collection in the Library of Congress. The linocut offered here is printed on very thin paper and is in near fine condition. It is now archivally matted and ready to be framed in a standard 16"" by 20"" frame.. First Edition. Single Sheet. Fine-. Illus. by Al Frueh. Fine Art Print.