Artwork details

Artist

Wallace Berman

Title

Loveweed

Description

Technique: 1-color lithograph printed on BFK Rives 300 g with Voirin lithographic press, hand cut.

Signature: Stamped by The Estate of Wallace Berman, numbered and stamped by our publishing house.

Co-edition: with Galerie Frank Elbaz.

LOVEWEED by Wallace Berman is a facsimile edition of the original offset poster from 1963, realized with The Estate of Wallace Berman.
Characteristic of the artist’s life philosophy, this work is as much a manifesto for weed as it is a manifesto for freedom.

In the 1960s, especially on the West Coast, pot was a huge socio-political topic and being that it was illegal, people in America and elsewhere were given prison sentences for having or selling it.
As a fervent social Libertarian, Berman didn’t believe that there should be drug laws of any sort not because he was pro-drug, but rather because he clearly didn’t think the law was best to solve issues of narcotic usage.

This poster was distributed in California by the artist himself, both in artistic contexts and anonymously—the latter being of great appeal to Berman.

Date

2023

Medium

Colour Lithograph

Edition

Signature

Signed

Sheet

54 cm x 38 cm (21.26 in. x 14.96 in.) cm

Status

Available

Price

$1,068.00

Wallace Berman

Wallace Berman (February 18, 1926–February 18, 1976) is a crucial figure in the history of post-war American art and an icon of the California Beat movement. His personality and multifaceted body of work (collages, photography, graphic design, drawing, sculptures, and film) deeply influenced several generations of artists. His practice resonates with jazz, Jewish mysticism, and poetry that accompanied and inspired his work. According to Dennis Hopper, “he affected and influenced everybody seriously involved in the arts in Los Angeles in the 1950s. If there was a guru, he was it—the high priest, the holyman, the rabbi.” Walters Hopps recalled “his magical touch of wit.” Between 1953 and 1965, his small house on Crater Lane (Los Angeles) was the center of a community of artists : it was in his living room that the seeds for Semina Culture were sown, following the title of his famous journal Semina (1955–1964).