Sam Messer, Large Abstract Expressionist Figure Handmade Paper Etching Silkscreen Print, 1987

This is done on a very interesting handmade paper (Japanese?) it is hand signed and numbered.
In this print the artist Sam Messer uses bold contrasting colors in a gestural manner. Messer’s work, so apparently spontaneous or impulsive in its emphasis on highly dramatic gestural brushstrokes and intense color, is, in fact, carefully considered. The treatment of the composition conveys dynamic movement through the sweep and rapid movement of the brush. During the 1980s, Sam Messer emerged as a significant painter in the Neo-Expressionist movement, which first began in the 1970s as a reaction against conceptual and minimalist art. Drawing inspiration from surrealists such as Max Ernst, Andre Masson, and Yves Tanguy, Messer’s bold paintings presented hallucinatory, theatrical scenes which seemed to slither straight from the subconscious.
Sam Messer is a painter living in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, film writer and director Eleanor Gaver, and daughter. He is Associate Dean and professor at the Yale School of Art. He has painted numerous paintings of the author Paul Auster’s typewriter.
Messer’s animation titled Denis the Pirate will be featured in a Matrix Gallery exhibit in the Fall of 2017 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.Messer received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union in 1976 and an M.F.A. from Yale University in 1982. He is represented by Nielsen Gallery, Boston, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles. His work may be found in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Art Institute of Chicago, and Yale University Art Gallery. Mr. Messer has received awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant in 1984, the Engelhard Award in 1985, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 1993, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. He has recently collaborated with Paul Auster on The Story of My Typewriter, and with Denis Johnson on Cloud of Chalk as well as with Jonathan Safran Foer. He was appointed senior critic at Yale in 1994 and in 2005 was appointed associate dean and professor (adjunct). He also serves as director of the art division of the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk.