Prometheus III is a lift-ground etching and engraving created in 1952 by American artist Salvatore Grippi. It is pencil signed, titled and dated. The edition is not stated but is presumed to be quite limited. Prometheus III was printed on an ivory wove paper and the platemark measures 11-3/4 x 13-3/4 inches.
Mythology was a rich source of inspiration for the surrealist printmakers working at Atelier 17 in New York. Prometheus was a Greek god who stole the gods' fire and gave it to humans in the forms of technology, knowledge, and civilization. Some myths credit him with creating humans from clay. His punishment from Zeus was eternal torture; he was tied to a rock and an eagle—the emblem of Zeus—was sent to eat his liver, which would then grow back and the attach would be repeated each day for eternity. Grippi maintained a physicality in his work and he approached each object or figure almost as a block of stone or wood to be chiseled. Here, his image overlaps, moving from abstract to figurative, two dimensional to sculptural, a kind of bas-relief in ink.
Salvatore Grippi, painter, printmaker and sculptor, was born in Buffalo, New York on September 30, 1921. He studied at the Albright Art School, the Museum of Modern Art School, the Art Students’ League under the G.I.Bill, Atelier 17 in New York, and Istituto Statale d’Arte in Florence as a Fullbright Scholar.
Grippi has been an influential teacher with positions at Cooper Union Art School, Fieldston School Arts Center, School of Visual Arts, Pomona College, Claremont Graduate School, and Ithaca College.
Grippi's paintings and prints have been included in a host of exhibitions throughout the United States. Grippi was a contributor to "Twenty-one Etchings and Poems," which was started at Atelier 17 in New York and published by the Morris Gallery in 1960. It was a collaboration between twenty-one Atelier 17 printmakers and twenty-one poets.
His work is included in the collections of the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; the British Museum, London; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; the Library of Congress and the Hirshhorn Collection, Washington, D.C.; and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
Salvatore Grippi died in Brewster, Massachusetts on 30 November 2017 at age 96.
