Untitled (Litho #8)

The present work belongs to a group of seven lithographs executed in 1966. The entire edition of fifty each plus artist's proofs were placed in storage soon after printing because of doubts about the economic sense of a large number of prints appearing at one time. The question of how and when to market them remained unresolved at the time of the artist's death, and these important prints were virtually unknown for the next twenty-five years. It is not known how many were signed by the artist, but the number must be extremely small. It should be noted that the Graham catalogue illustrates Litho #8 vertically, whereas de Kooning has signed this example as if it were a horizontal composition