TitleY.M.C.A. Locker Room
Artist
Paul Cadmus
(American, 1904 - 1999)
Date1934
MediumEtching on cream German etching paper
DimensionsSheet size: 17 15/16 × 14 1/2 in.
Plate size: 6 7/16 × 12 5/8 in.
Mat size: 16 × 19 3/4 in.
Edition27/35 (II)
SignedSigned in graphite at lower right: "Paul Cadmus".
MarkingsBlindstamps for The Print Cabinet and Richard Waller at BL recto.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, October 6, 1980
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1980.70.3
Label TextPaul Cadmus was one of the best known figurative artists of the twentieth century and part of a larger group of artists that became known as "magic realists" that also included Jared French, George Tooker, and others. Cadmus was born the son of artists and studied a traditional curriculum of drawing from the figure at the National Academy of Design in the early 1920s. He exhibited widely throughout the decade and worked right up to his death at the ripe old age of ninety-five. As illustrated in this etching, one of a group he created in the mid-1930s, Cadmus was a draughtsman extraordinaire and was able to render the human figure with unequalled sensitivity and detail.By combining an interest in Surrealist subjects with Renaissance painting techniques the so-called magic realists created a highly-personal narrative mode of painting. This print, taken after a painting of the same title, illustrates Cadmus' interest in the nude male figure, a subject that he would depict over the course of his long career. Like many of the artist's paintings and drawings, Y.M.C.A. Locker Room has strong sexual overtones without some of the overt lasciviousness in some of his other works.
