E. Salem Krieger Surrealist Print, Lawyers

Artist: E. Salem-Krieger
Title: Budding lawyers
Year: Circa 1979
Medium: Serigraph [Signed and Numbered in Pencil]
Edition: 300
Paper Size: 30" x 22"

 

  Krieger studied cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art, a school renowned for it's illustrious alumni the included Walt Disney. Krieger also attended the Art Institute of Chicago which continues to share a number of the same attitudes initially established the same attitudes initially established in the 60's by the Hairy Who and W.C. Westermann. Westermann initiated the humorous use of colloquialisms and puns as titles. This School of thought was an obvious influence on Krieger whose amusing and gentle sarcasm can be further traced to Dada and Surrealism. Krieger takes familiar objects and suspends the in the stratosphere. He merges man with nature in a melting pot contradiction much like Magritte. Unlike Magritte's menacing and foreboding approach Krieger plays more with an oddly engaging surreality of easy humor.

    Krieger' s Clever Wit and Imagination complements his use of media so well that the overall professionalism of his works is rather startling when you consider that at 24, Krieger has been a professional illustrator for a little less that three years. Art directors have been know to pick unpublished samples straight from his portfolio to fill the needs of a job.

       Krieger finds that his response to many assignments is touched off by what he terms a "keyword" from the art director. When the American Bar Association asked him to illustrate an article an article whose topic was described as "a plague of lawyers," Krieger produced a sky full of business-suited lawyers, appended with wings and legs and attached cases, dropping in upon the unsuspecting city below. Krieger has a affinity for using multitudes of small things from musical dots, starry hearts, insects, to ice cream cones in space. This Multitude adds to the felling of growth and metamorphosis in Krieger's work. Krieger employs rich blacks and saturated areas of color. The effect is special and cosmic, provocative, entertaining and witty. Krieger finds the essential being of a visual problem by approaching it from the simplest train of thought in association with the idea he wants to illustrate. Krieger avoids complicated references, his humorous outlook has enough sophistication to appeal to the heartland of American optimists.

Commissions
Paper Moon Graphics
Dun and Bradstreet
American Telephone and Telegraph
Mexican Government
American Journal of Nursing
Family Health Publications
Putnam Publications
Time-Life Publications
Chicago Academy of Fine Arts
American bar Association
Forbes Magazine
Cricket Children's Publications
New York Magazine
Chicago magazine
MacMillan Publications