Composition à Trois Éléments. Composition in Three Elements. by Albert Gleizes, 1881-1953

Albert Gleizes, 1881-1953
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Composition à Trois Éléments. Composition in Three Elements.

Stencil print with nineteen colours. 1927/28. Signed in pencil. Dated '23 (the date of the painting to which this stencil print is linked). From the edition of c.50 impressions. Printed in Paris by Pouyard 1927/28, but with the Moly-Sabata stamp and reference number X11 on the
verso. Issued by Galerie Povolosky, Paris 1927/28.
Ref: Loyer - Gleizes Les Estampes no IV (4).

Brilliant impression with excellent fresh colours. On pale cream smooth wove paper. Exceptional unrubbed condition; the slightest signs of time toning at the outer margin edges only. Full margins. Sheet: 25 5/8 x 19 3/4ins. Image: 15 3/4 x 10 3/4ins (400x272mm).

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This composition relates to the 1923 painting of the same title. At this period in the mid 20's Gleizes became interested in using compositional arrangements taken from the forms of mediaeval icons. It was not the subject which interested him but the way that the traditional groupings of the figures made an interactive pattern of forms. He translated this into an abstract cubist arrangement of shapes, colours and surfaces which make a visual organisation of space and plane.

One of the qualities of these mid 20's paintings is the contrast of flat and worked surfaces. When Gleizes was introduced to the stencil printmaking medium he was immediately very attracted to it, for the dense inks, total precision of shape and edge and strong but precise colour which the medium allows seemed to him a way that he could further develop the ideas in his paintings.

The purpose of using stencil-printing was to achieve a total perfection of impression. Gleizes worked with the printer Pouyard, who also worked with Picasso at the same period. He was certainly one of the greatest master-printmakers in the stencil medium, and the Gleizes stencil prints are a tour-de-force of printing, this work, for example, uses nineteen colours.