Sam Ringer, Fantastic Composition, Engraving Of A Zoomorphic Figure, 1950, Artist's Proof

A beautiful and rare original engraving by Sam Ringer, signed in pencil in the lower right corner “S. Ringer” and dated 1950. Handwritten notation “Artist’s proof” in the lower left corner.

A fantastical composition populated by hybrid forms, both animal and plant. A large, totemic central figure is surrounded by slender creatures with the silhouettes of birds, fish, or imaginary animals.

The graphic vocabulary is extremely rich. The artist contrasts vast dark areas with large forms left in reserve, which he animates with hatching, dotted lines, and very fine lines. The silhouettes interlock with one another, creating an image that is at once organic, strange, and poetic.

The large, vertical, sharply defined central form evokes at once a tree, a winged creature, or an anthropomorphic figure. Surrounding it are several fantastical beings with elongated necks, pointed beaks, and bristling bodies, whose deliberately unreal appearance brings the work closer to a surrealist and expressionist imagination.

The engraving is particularly interesting due to its date of 1950, corresponding to the years of Sam Ringer’s training in Paris. Having arrived in France in 1947, he studied for six years at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. There, he studied painting under Jean Souverbie, printmaking under Édouard Goerg and Camille Fonce, and lithography under René Jaudon.

That same year, 1950, his works were featured in a group exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which gives this print a particularly significant place in the early stages of his career in France.

Samuel Ringer, known as Sam Ringer, was born in Tarnów, Poland, in 1918. Drawn to drawing from an early age, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1937 and won first prize in drawing in 1939. World War II abruptly interrupted his education. As a Polish Jew, he was subjected to forced labor and then successively deported to several Nazi camps before being liberated in 1945. After a period of convalescence and a return to the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, he left Poland and settled in France in 1947.

His work subsequently evolved between figuration, abstraction, and the realm of the fantastic. This phantasmagorical dimension, in which real forms are transformed into hybrid and imaginary beings, is reflected in the subsequent reception of his work.

Sam Ringer is today associated with the School of Paris. Several institutional exhibitions have contributed to the rediscovery of his work, notably at the Museum of Jewish Art and History and in the exhibition “Deported Artists of Europe” at the Musée du Montparnasse in 2005.

Artist: Sam RINGER / Samuel Ringer (1918–1986)

Subject: fantastical composition, zoomorphic figures, and imaginary forms

Date: 1950

Technique: black engraving on paper

Edition: artist’s proof

Sheet dimensions: 28.5 × 20 cm, or approximately 11.2 × 7.9 inches

Signature: signed in pencil “S. Ringer” in the lower right corner

Date: dated 1950 below the signature

Inscription: handwritten note “ Artist’s proof” in the lower left corner

School / movement: School of Paris, fantasy art, Expressionism, Surrealism, postwar art