Théo Tobiasse, Lithography and mixed technique, “Rachel”, 1984

Théo Tobiasse, signed.

Mixed technique, lithography and carborundum print figuring a very colorful and stylized woman with long black hairs and with cut arms coming from the right and the top. On her belly, another smaller woman is represented. On the right, a vase with a violin in front of it and a candleholder with seven fires on it. On the left, a train is rolling.
Colorful background in orange, beige and pink tones.

Inscriptions “Rachel” and “Dans l’exil du Miroir surgi du fond du ventre”.

Artist proof signed “Tobiasse” with a pencil on the right bottom.

Print coming from the portfolia “Les Mères Bibliques” (*The Biblical Mothers), Nahan Galleries Editor, New Orleans and dated 1984.

Molded silvered wood frame.

Dimensions : view : H 109 x W 63 cm / frame : H 145 x W 110 x D 5 cm.

Reference : LS4199501

Théo Tobiasse (1927-2012) was a French painter, engraver, drawer and sculptor. Born in Israël, his family moved to France in 1931 where his father worked in a Russian printer company. Persecuted and forced to hide during the Second World War, because of his Jewish origins, he began just after the Liberation, an advertising graphic artist carreer in the art printer Draeger.
In the 1960’s, he began his painter carreer by exhibiting regularly his canvas all around the world. Thanks to his trips, he improved his technique by learning from the painting great masters. The no narrative figurative subjects permitted him to experiment new colors, techniques and textures.
He also began to explore the iconography linked to his childhood but also the exil due to Shoah. With this, three other themes inspired him : the cities he liked, the Bible and the erotic lover-woman. He continued to explore differents plastic arts as the carborundum engraving, the ceramic, the sculpture in his workshop in Nice and then in his house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence from 1976.
Tobiasse installed himself in the United States in 1984, pushed by the American merchant Kenneth Nahan Sr. He created his workshop in Manhattan and shared his time and work between New-York and France. His themes changed and became more luminous by including the notion of freedom.
In 1986, he came back to France and experimented again by using acrylic, mixed techniques with collage, painting and oil pastel. He realized public orders on painted wood or steel panels. In the 1980’s/1990’s, his creation is rich and diversified : stained-glasses, creations of puppets decors and costumes, drawings, prints, etc.
His different artworks mixed surrealism and expressionism by passing through the History with his mythologies, his dreams, his biblical stories and his own past mixed with subtility, in a magical story.

Source :

• Catherine Faust-Tobiasse, Official website Théo Tobiasse, “Biographie”, URL = http://www.tobiasse.fr/biographie/