Kiki Smith: “Come Away From Her (After Lewis Carroll), 2003, Aquatint, drypoint, etching and sanding with watercolor additions on mould-made En Tout Cas paper, signed lower right in graphite: “Kiki Smith 2003”. Size: 50 1/2 × 74 in / 128.3 × 188 cm, Edition of 28. SOLD.

About this Artwork

Come Away from Heris based on a manuscript drawing by Lewis Carroll for his bookAlice’s Adventures Under Ground(1864). At this point in his story, friendly birds fly off when Alice talks about what her cat likes to eat. In Kiki Smith’s prints based on fairytales, childhood vulnerability and innocence like Alice’s can be imbued with a sense of the sexual awakening that accompanies adolescence, and the animals sometimes shown with young girls suggest underlying forces of nature. Here we witness a cryptic scene, as Alice watches winged forms, some of them with incongruous limbs, fly away from her.

About the Artist

Widely considered to be one of the most engaging and fascinating artists of our time, Kiki Smith has, over the past 25 years, developed into a major figure in the world of twenty-first-century art. Kiki Smith has produced an astoundingly varied body of work that deals powerfully with the political, social, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of human nature―especially in the way they relate to women. Smith’s earlier works reflect the social discourse of the 1980s, particularly focusing on death and the AIDS epidemic. She later turned to issues of feminism, abortion rights, and animal rights. By the early 1990s, she began to engage with themes of a more religious and mythological nature. Her re-imaginings of biblical women as inhabitants of physical bodies–rather than as abstract bearers of doctrine led her to make series of sculptural works related to the figure of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Lilith and others. The artist has more recently considered fairy tales and folk narratives as well as nurturing a growing menagerie of work concerned with animals and the natural world. Smith has now earned a considerable reputation as a virtuoso printmaker and draftsperson, and as a re-inventor of the startling sculptural possibilities present in materials ranging from paper and resin to bronze and porcelain.

Her radical, unflinching work reveal an artist who is not afraid to explore subjects such as the human body or a society’s archetypes. It is filled with the beauty, vitality, and charm that are the hallmarks of Kiki Smith’s art. Kiki Smith’s aesthetic vocabulary encompasses concerns with external mythological themes, feminity, sexuality and nature, in work that has expanded the very parameters of sculpture.

Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany, the daughter of sculptor Tony Smith, today she is based in New York, New York. Brought up in South Orange, New Jersey, she enrolled at Hartford Art School in Connecticut in 1974 but dropped out eighteen months later. Settling in New York in 1976, Smith earned her living over the next few years doing odd jobs. Around 1978, she joined Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab), an artists’ collective devoted to making art accessible through exhibitions outside commercial gallery settings. It was during this period that she made her first artworks, monotypes of everyday objects. Virtually self-taught, Smith describes herself as “a thing-maker.” With the death of her father in 1980, Smith turned her attention to themes of mortality and decay, focusing on human corporeality. Hand in Jar (1983) consists of a latex hand covered in algae and submerged in a mason jar filled with water. Its clinical realism calls to mind a pathology lab or a dissecting studio. In 1985, propelled by an interest in obtaining practical knowledge about the body, Smith studied to become an emergency medical technician. The impact of this experience on her work was immediate and profound.

More Works by this Artist

Kiki Smith, Promising, 2018, lithograph with sokscreen and foil, edition of 28

Kiki Smith, Promising, 2018, lithograph with silkscreen and foil, edition of 28, 39 1/4 x 29 1/2 in – 99,7 x 74,9 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith:”Calling 1″, triptych, , 2004, photograph and laserprint of 3 C-prints with screen printing, signed and numbered by the artist on verso, edition 26, size 20.00 x 10.75 in / 50.8 x 27.3 cm, or: 30.00 x 15.75 in / 76.2 x 40.0 cm. Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Puppet’, 1993-94, etching + collage, signed and numbered, edition of 35, 57 15/16 x 29 1/8 in.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Las Animas’, 1997, etching, signed and numbered, edition of 47, size: 601 5/8 x 49 1/4 in.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith, Bite, 1988, Digital print on paper, signed, edition of 50

Kiki Smith, Bite, 1988, Digital print on paper, signed, edition of 50, s53 x 74, s20.9 x 29.1.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘My Blue Lake’, 1995, Photogravure and lithograph, 43 3/4 x 54 3/4 in (111 x 139 cm), signed by the artist, edition of 41.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith almost literally skinned herself for ‘My Blue Lake’, having her image stretched end to end as though it had been peeled. For this work she took things a few steps further. She posed two days in the British Museum in front of a geographical surveying camera (one of only three in the world!). It’s the same principle used in mapmaking, meaning Kiki’s proportions have been laid out according to the same logic that makes Greenland appear bigger than Australia. In so doing, Kiki questions our notion of accepted beauty standards and the mathematical rationalization of “beauty.” The resulting Fernando Botero effect highlights the inconsistency of evaluating human subjects on scientific terms.

olor iris print, signed, numbered and dated – framed, size: 12 × 18 in / 30.5 × 45.7 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Eggs’, 2015, watercolor, goldleaf and Graphite on Losin Prague Paper, edition varies, signed and dated by the artist, edition open.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith:‘ Good Day”, 2015, paper collage over color etching / laid paper, edition of 18, signed, numbered and dated; 29.5 x 21.5 on 46.5 x 37 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Esperanza’, 2015, paper collage (hologram paper) over two-part colour etching on mylar paper, laminated on a sheet of laid paperboard, edition of 18, signed, numbered and dated; 90 x 60 on 107 x 75.5 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Woman with Lion”, 2003, Porcelain, edition of 13, size: 11 1/16 x 12 x 7 1/16 in. 28 x 30,5 x 7 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: Bird and Egg, 1996, 2 parts plaster and cord, edition of 100, signed and inscribed in the enclosed certificate; bird: 10.2 x 21 x 6.4 cm, egg: 4.1 x 3.5 cm; total size: variable.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Eclipse V’, 2014, Bronze Sculpture, size: 14 5/8 x 11 7/8 x 3 7/8 in. 37 x 30 x 18,7 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘ Unknown (flower head 4), 2012, bronze sculpture, size: 17,7 x 15,3 x 6,6 inch, 45 x 39 x 17 cm.Price upon Request.

Kiki Smith: ‘Title: Europa, I am the Flesh of the Full Moon’, 2000/2006, Pigmented Paper Collage Multiple, signed, dated and numbered in pencil, edition of 25, paper size: 21 x 29 inches.Price upon Request.

Detail:

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atercolor and pencil on paper, size: 11 1/2 × 8 in / 29.2 × 20.3 cm, signed, dated.Price upon Request.