Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: MLK (Martin Luther King, Jr.), from the Portraits of Luminaries Collection
Year created: 2010
Medium: Original Mixed Media Painting on Canvas
Edition: Original Unique Artwork, Hand-Signed by the Artist
Height (inches): 30
Width (inches): 20
Depth (inches): 5/8
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This original work on canvas comes stretched and ready for display, with a picture wire on reverse.
Description of piece:
An iconic portrait of the historic legend, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement from 1955 to his untimely death by assassination in 1968. Truly, our country would not be the same today, were it not for the foundational and self-sacrificing work of MLK.
This intimate portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrates Sid Maurer’s mastery as a fine artist, evident in his strikingly accurate, personal and intuitive portraits of luminaries. Imbued with warmth and vibrancy, Maurer’s portraits capture the essence of his subjects, and synthesize Maurer’s artistic vision with his technical and compositional roots in graphic design.
Maurer’s portrait of MLK is accentuated with bold application of paint, and applied layers of deep, rich color, and bright highlighting. Maurer's inclusion of his signature use of graphic stylized letters completes this portrait, which is at once timeless and contemporary— and an eminently moving visual portrayal.
An original mixed media painting on canvas, Sid Maurer’s self-titled MLK is one of the largest single portraits in his entire Portraits of Luminaries Collection, measuring 30" in height x 20" width x 5/8" depth.
The artwork is hand-signed by the artist, in a large bold signature, in silver, lower right. This original work on canvas comes freshly stretched and ready for display.
MLK is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, which comes in a clear, protective archival sleeve.
Artist bio:
Sid Maurer's (1926-2017) long career spanned decades in the world of Art and Music, beginning at age seventeen when he was hired as Assistant Art Director at Columbia Records in New York City. When the music industry exploded, Maurer designed album covers and promotional material for popular artists, alongside Columbia Records colleague Andy Warhol. Maurer expanded his commercial art studio to tackle a wide range of projects for the music and film industries, while his striking artistic style developed, influenced by artists he met including Pollack and Rauschenberg.
Maurer left the empire of music and art that he had helped to build to focus on his passion: painting. In the last decade, his work has been shown in a wide variety of venues, including the Georgia Capitol, the Carnegie Museum and U.C.L.A. His commissioned artwork includes work for ESPN, MotorSport America Magazine, David Bowie, Boy George, and Donovan.
As a painter, Maurer created large mixed media pieces that were very much a product of his varied training and experience. His style combined bold, dynamic colors and strokes with painstaking layouts and typographical elements. The result is the unique blend of a painter's passion tempered with the calculating compositional eye of a graphic designer, exploring his themes through the use of bold subject matter, symbols and graphics.