Finding a set of Kandinsky prints

October 9, 2012 3:25 PM

Place to buy high-quality Kandinsky prints?

At the weekend I saw the series of four panels that Kandinsky painted for Edwin Campbell, and I just loved them. I would love to get high-quality prints of all four, but all I can find online is the first panel, e.g. here.

I've never pursued a particular print like this before, so am pretty clueless and open to all suggestions. Are there places online that would custom print something for me, or even offline places? I'm having a hard time getting past the search results for other Kandinsky prints or generic poster places.

Thanks art enthusiasts!

posted by StephenF to media & arts (6 answers total)

Weirdly—though I don't know his body of work at all, not my period—very little Kandinsky comes up at Sothebys and Christies, and definitely no prints. And my favorite art poster collectors have nothing.

Since MoMA owns those, I'd be surprised if they hadn't made posters or "prints" (which are posters; in the art world, "prints" are something specific: usually lithographs or otherwise plate-pressed or embossed ink or paint on paper, and editioned) at some point, but seemingly, they only did #1. The good news! That other site is selling this, or something similar, I think, at a rip-off markup (plus a currency exchange). (ALTHOUGH, they attribute the image copyright (weird) to McGaw Graphics, which then... doesn't show that one on their site.

That's a real stumper.

To get something like that custom-printed, you'd have to have a very good, high resolution photograph, which will be, at best, very difficult to obtain.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:47 PM on October 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

RJR, not quite following what you mean when you say 'that other site' - did you leave out a link? Thanks for your help, and the vocabulary correction :-)
posted by StephenF at 4:11 PM on October 9, 2012

You might be able to get these from one of the outfits that reproduce famous oil paintings. Here's one that has a bunch of Kandinsky's, though not the pieces in question. Here's Panel #4 from a seller at Amazon; maybe they can do the other three panels as well.
posted by alms at 6:21 PM on October 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

A high resolution photograph would actually be easy (although potentially costly) to obtain from MoMA's rights and reproductions department. And oh, look, they've outsourced to Scala. More info here.
posted by obliquicity at 8:54 PM on October 9, 2012

Of course, you'd have to figure out how to print them yourself. Once you're okay with a digital print I guess any commercial reprographics outfit should be able to help you, though.
posted by obliquicity at 8:55 PM on October 9, 2012

Thanks all!
posted by StephenF at 1:25 AM on October 10, 2012