Lou Stoval Color Screenprint, ca. 1970
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GUEST:
I found it in a thrift store about 20 years ago. I'm a graphic designer, so I like, just, color. It's really funky, and I think the reason I got it is that it seems like it's about, like, a hippie house or something? Some sort of communal living situation? I don't know-- it's a mystery to me.
APPRAISER:
I'm here to solve the mystery for you. (chuckles)
GUEST:
Excellent.
APPRAISER:
It's part of the fun of being on the ROADSHOW. We can't see a signature, right? There's no signature here. Two things tell me who made it. In the lower left, the stamp that says "Workshop."
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
And above it is, is a, what we call a blind stamp. It's an embossing that's made by the person who printed it. It's a color screen print, so the little stamp here is screen printed. But the blind stamp told me right away who it was. So this was made by a Washington, D.C., artist. It's a D.C. address. 619 D Street Southeast. So we know it's Washington, D.C. His name is Lou Stovall.
GUEST:
Oh.
APPRAISER:
And he's a master screen printer. Lou Stovall is an important African American artist. He's an artist who's been integral to the art scene in Washington, D.C., for years.
GUEST:
Oh.
APPRAISER:
And sadly, he recently passed away, this year, in March.
GUEST:
Oh.
APPRAISER:
And Friendship House, which was, like, a settlement house on Capitol Hill, so he made this screen print poster for a fundraiser. And Lou Stovall came to Washington, D.C., in the '60s. He was born in Athens, Georgia, and he studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C., which is a famous college-- an HBCU, historically Black college or university-- and has a wonderful art department. It has, it was the first school to have a fine art department for African American students.
GUEST:
Hm.
APPRAISER:
And he studied there with some great printmakers like James Wells and Elizabeth Catlett, and he took to screen printing. Now, he did a lot of great graphic posters like this in the late '60s-- 1968 to, like, '72, '75. So this is probably around where this dates, around 1970. It's got definitely the '70s color, so I would say circa 1970. Workshop, as you see on the print, was Lou Stovall's press. And so he printed screen prints like this for himself. But he's best known for his collaborations with other artists that he did at the Workshop. And he worked with Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence-- very important African American artists. There's been wonderful appreciation of his prints. And this is a cool poster. It's not a limited edition, as far as we know, but these are very scarce, and I've never seen this print before. Have you any sense of what the value might be?
GUEST:
None at all. I got it for maybe five bucks at a thrift store.
APPRAISER:
As a great graphic poster of his, with the interest in his graphic design, today at auction, I would conservatively put this at $1,500 to $2,000.
GUEST:
Awesome.
APPRAISER:
It's groovy.
GUEST:
It's very groovy.
APPRAISER:
(laughs)
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