Artist: JIM DINE American, b. Title: “Tool Box 1 (black)” – 1966. Medium: Original Mixed-Media Photo-Screenprint with Collage of silver card strip, printed in black and white on J. Signature: Hand-Signed in Pencil on the image [the pencil signature is extremely hard to see; very lightly signed on the black surface]. Edition: Limited Edition of 100 impressions; this one individually numbered”69/150″ verso. Size: 23 3/4 x 18 3/4 inches; 605 x 477 mm (sheet; printed to edges). About Dine’s Tool Box Portfolio of 1966. This was Dines first portfolio of 10 images where Dine first deals with the imagery of hand tools. The imagery is significant to Dine as his father and grandfather owned hardware stores in the States. Printer: Chris Prater, master printer, Kelpra Studios, Ltd. Publisher: Editions Alecto, London; Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham Rutland. Publicaiton Price in 1966. Provenance: The Hatch Collection – Los Angeles; Hatay Stratton Fine Art, Northampton, Massachusettes. Born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jim Dine studied at the University of Cincinnati and at the Boston School of Fine and Applied Arts in Boston, Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957. In 1957 he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Ohio University, Athens. He moved to New York in 1959. He staged his first Happenings with Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow at the Judson Gallery, New York. He had his first one- man exhibition at the Reuben Gallery, New York. Between 1960 and 1965 he had various guest professorships, among others at Yale University, New Haven, and Oberlin College, Ohio. He was represented at the Venice Biennale in 1964, and at the documents “4” in Kassel in 1968. From the early 1970s Dine’s oil paintings, prints perhaps his most successful work, usually sensitive and simple depictions of tools, robes, etc. And drawings became increasingly figurative. In 1957 he received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio University. After graduation, he moved to New York City and became involved with Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein whose work moved away from abstract expressionism toward pop art. Dine incorporated images of everyday objects in his art, but he diverged from the coldness and impersonal nature of pop art by making works that fused personal passions and everyday experiences. His repeated use of familiar and personally significant objects, such as a robe, hands, tools, and hearts, is a signature of his art. In his early work, Dine created mostly assemblages in which he attached actual objects to his painted canvases. From 1959 to 1960, Dine also was a pioneer of happenings, works of art that took the form of theatrical events or demonstrations. In 1967 Dine and his family moved to London, England, where he devoted his energies to printmaking and drawing. Dine’s attention turned to sculptural work in the early 1980s when he created sculptures based on the sculpture Venus de Milo. His recent art uses imagery borrowed from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and African objects, as well as iconic imagery from social cultures like Pinocchio, tools, robes and hearts. In his paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphics, collages. Assemblages he combined different techniques with handwritten texts and words and set real everyday objects against undefined backgrounds. The objects were both commonplace and personal, both poetic and ironic, reflecting his feelings about life. His constantly varied bathrobe, transparent to the gaze of the world, was a kind of metaphor for a self-portrait.
