Mid-Century Art: Allan D'Arcangelo

A while back my dad gave me some artwork and said, "I bought this at an art fair back in the '60s; we don't have anywhere to hang it in our house anymore and I thought you might like it." And I did like it, but I also didn't have anywhere to hang it. So it went in the attic till I could figure out where it should go. That was a few years ago.

A few weeks back I was in the attic and stumbled across the print again and decided to look into who made it. Luckily there was a lot of information on the back of the frame.

Even the frame itself had the artists name on it.

So it wasn't too hard to figure out that it was a Allan D'Arcangelo serigraph and that it was one of the American highway and signs pieces that he's best known for. But I couldn't figure out what specific piece this one was. So I contacted Allan D'Arcangelo's estate and they were kind enough to point me to a printer in Germany who they believed did the originally printing. 

That company was Edition Domberger, who told me:

This piece was a greeting card, published by Multiples, Inc. in New York in 1969. It was printed by us and on the back it says, “Silk Screen from Banner by Allan D'Arcangelo for Multiples Inc., 1969"

So that mystery is solved. The name of this piece is “Silk Screen from Banner by Allan D'Arcangelo for Multiples Inc., 1969." And after a little more back and forth with Edition Domberger, they let me know that this was never a serigraph, but that it could come framed so you wouldn't know it was a card that opened. And that whoever wrote 1967 on the back of mine must have just gotten the date wrong; the only printing of it was in 1969.

That said, this is a really nice greeting card, which actually has some texture in the printing. I can see why someone would want it framed. Now I just need to find a place to hang it.