53. Leon Dolice
(1892-1960)

Off Asbury Park, New Jersey

(click on image to print)
Dolice: Off Asbury Park

Off Asbury Park, New Jersey

Etching, 121 x 198 mm. Fine impression in blue-black ink on pale blue-grey wove paper, with plate tone and wiped highlights, small margins, signed and titled in pencil. Dolice was born and raised in Vienna, the son of a machinist who taught him metal crafts. He, however, preferred art and spent his time drawing, traveling through Europe studying paintings in museums and making his living, unevenly, through design work, metal working and cooking. He came to America in 1920 and settled in Greenwich Village just in time for the Roaring Twenties. New York, and a bit of its surroundings, was his perpetual subject both for etchings and for many rather striking pastels, recently much appreciated after many years of disdain. In fact, it is probably only in the last twenty years, well after his death, that his work as a whole seems to have gotten across to more than just a few collectors and institutions. This print is quite striking for its high horizon line and the bits of ships, land and buildings run in a string across it, everything else waves and water.