TitleStorm Pier
Artist
Paul Resika
(b. 1928)
Date1995
MediumAquatint on white BFK Rives paper
DimensionsSheet size: 19 5/8 × 25 15/16 in.
Plate size: 8 7/8 × 12 11/16 in.
Mat size: 23 × 28 3/4 in.
Edition2/35
SignedSigned in graphite at LR: "Resika".
MarkingsWatermark: BFK RIVES / FRANCE.
Blindstamp of publisher at BRC.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of the artist, 1998
Object number1998.23
Label TextBorn and raised in New York City, Paul Resika is known for his landscapes of the countryside of Cape Cod and elsewhere. Resika studied with Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann from 1945 to 1947, spending the summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1947 and beginning a life-long love of Cape Cod. His first exhibition was in 1948 with a group of like-minded artists from Provincetown, but Resika ultimately turned away from abstract painting and would not exhibit again until 1964. In the interim, the artist decided to apply himself to the study of the Old Masters by moving first to Paris, then Venice, and finally Rome. He returned to New York in 1953 at the height of Abstract Expressionism's popularity.A painter who often depicts piers and boats in a strong painterly style, Resika has created a number of prints in recent years that bear thematic and stylistic comparison with his paintings. In this work, he conveyed the forces of wind and sea through various aquatint techniques that allowed for sweeping gestural effects and produced, appropriately enough, amorphous areas of varying tonality.
