Lot #4: Donald Stoltenberg "Rail Bridges"

Beautifully layered, mysterious watercolor from Donald Stoltenberg, 1927-2016. "Rail Bridges" is a striking example of a subject he returned to many times during his career: infrastructure, specifically bridges and gritty urban areas, transformed by his unique style, distinguished by the use of refracted images and precise geometry. Stoltenberg grew up in Chicago, and studied at the Chicago Institute of Design. He worked as a graphic designer before turning to painting and printmaking, and is considered the father of collagraphy, a printing technique about which he also published several books. Stoltenberg lived on the Cape for over 50 years, and taught at the DeCordova Museum School in Lincoln, as well as several art institutes on the Cape; he also served as the visiting critic at Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been exhibited at many museums and galleries, including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Boston Athenaeum, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, and has won a slew of prizes. His works are in the permanent collections of the MFA, the Addison Gallery in Andover, the DeCordova, and many more.