"Watchers" by Lee Chesney, 1955.  Excellent condition, archivally matted and framed.  (12in H x 18in W Image, 25 1/4in H x 29in W Frame)  Signed in lower  righrt.    

Lee Chesney was born in Washington, DC in 1920.  He studied at the University of Colorado, University of Iowa where he and John Paul Jones and Ernest Freed under Mauricio Lasansky and la Universidad de Michoacan, Mexico.   After teaching for nearly two decades at the University of Illinois, Chesney made his way to Los Angeles in 1967 where  settled into a full-time position at the University of Southern California.  

Like his teacher Lasansky, he was most comfortable with intaglio printmaking, and he had a deep understanding of the technique. Indeed, Stanley William Hayter, who founded Atelier 17 and who was arguably responsible for bringing intaglio printmaking to the modern era, once declared that Chesney “was the best printmaker [he] had ever met.”  

Chesney’s work has won awards including a Fulbright Fellowship in 1956/57. He is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; National Gallery of Art, Stockholm; Tate Gallery; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Victoria and Albert Museum; Smithsonian Art Museum, National Gallery of Art; Library of Congress; Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum; Philadelphia Museum; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Oakland Museum; Seattle Museum of Art; Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County; Portland Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; the Butler Institute of American Art and numerous university collections.