Ohio Artist Russell Limbach Original Pencil Signed AAA Etching Approaching Storm 1938

Approaching Storm is an original etching by well known American artist Russell T. Limbach. This original print was hand signed in pencil by Limbach and published in 1938 in a Limited Edition of 250 by Associated American Artists (AAA) of New York.

Title: Approaching Storm
Artist: Russell T. Limbach - (1900-1988) - American artist
Technique: Original Etching
Signature: Signed in pencil by the artist
Date Published: 1939
Edition: From a Limited Edition of 250 published by Associated American Artists (AAA).
Dimensions: Sheet size - 12-1/4 x 15 inches, Image size - 8-3/4 x 11-3/4 inches, Mat size - 14 x 18 inches.
Condition: Excellent Condition without any flaws. Without age toning, foxing, tears, or creases.
References: Associated American Artists Index (2015), Print No. 268.
Printing: A strong impression printed in warm black ink on handmade cream wove paper.
Presentation: Hinged in the original AAA mat with the original AAA label. Blank on the back, not laid down. Ships in a plastic archival sleeve.
Description: Although many of his contemporaries provided multiple prints to Associated American Artists, particularly during the Great Depression years, this is the only one by Russell Limbach that they published.

Limbach was a highly skilled painter and printmaker. This powerful image of an approaching thunderstorm is expertly composed and drawn. At first all we see is the dark mountain and clouds in the background with a massive bolt of lightning spreading across the dark sky - but then we are drawn to the drama unfolding in the foreground. A family, enjoying a summer picnic, is now rushing away, with the father hastily gathering up the remaining items. At the edge of the lake, their small dog, looks out across the water.

This is a very fine work in the American Regionalist style.

Russell Limbach, known as “Butch,” was born in Massillon, Ohio. After making his first lithographs as a teenager in a large commercial house, he attended the Cleveland School of Art, 1922–26. He quit and worked in Cleveland in a shop-ad agency for a few years. After he was fired, he went to work for the publicity department of the Union Trust Company. In 1929 and 1930 he traveled to Europe, visiting Vienna, Berlin, and Paris.

Beginning in 1931, he made political cartoons for periodicals such as the Cleveland Magazine and the radical leftist publications the New Masses and the Daily Worker. An active member of the Cleveland Print Makers, he gave public demonstrations of printmaking and was one of the club’s directors. Limbach exhibited widely during the 1930s. His first solo show was at the Kokoon Klub (1931), and he had a show devoted to color lithographs at the Cleveland Print Market (1932). He participated in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1926–35) and in numerous exhibitions in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Cleveland (late 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s).

He was a member of the American Artists’ Congress, taking part in the America Today exhibition (1936). He was one of two Cleveland printmakers commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project in 1934. He moved to New York in 1935 and became technical advisor for the Works Progress Administration graphics workshop in New York, making the project’s first color lithograph. He taught at Walt Whitman High School in New York City beginning in 1939 and left the WPA in 1940. In 1941 Limbach joined the faculty at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and remained there until his death.
(Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 233.)