Biography of the artist

Whilst travelling on tour between 1989 and 1992, Bob Dylan created a collection of drawings that were published in a book entitled ‘Drawn Blank’ in 1994. These expressive works capture Dylan’s chance encounters and observations. The creation of these portraits, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, nudes and street scenes were done to “relax and refocus a restless mind”.

Ingrid Mössinger – the curator of the Kunstsammlungen Museum, in Chemnitz, Germany – came across Drawn Blank’ during a visit to New York in 2006. Instantly excited about Dylan’s work, she contacted the artist’s team and was thrilled to learn that Bob Dylan would agree to have his art exhibited in public for the first time.

When Dylan had first drawn the works in this series he had intended to create paintings based upon them. Ingrid Mössinger’s proposed exhibition encouraged him to now do this using watercolour and gouache. “I was fascinated to learn of Ingrid’s interest in my work, and it gave me the impetus to realise the vision I had for these drawings many years ago,” Bob Dylan commented.

These paintings formed a collection entitled ‘The Drawn Blank Series’. Unlike the delicacy of the drawings in ‘Drawn Blank’ the paintings are expressive and vibrant. Dylan paints several versions of the same image, using different colours and tones which result in a dynamic variety of impressions, feelings and emotions.

This choice and skill in applying different colour arrangements to the same original drawing enables Dylan to express his feelings and perceptions of an idea or view – continually evoking different feelings and reactions, and thereby creating evolving works of art. This technique is intrinsic to Dylan in all aspects of his creative life. As Tobias Rüther (Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper), who credited Dylan with successfully translating his songs into art, commented: “That which he’s done for years on the stage – performing new versions of his old songs in order to give a fresh interpretation – he’s now continuing on deckle-edged paper.”

THE DRAWN BLANK SERIES GRAPHICS COLLECTION Prior to the seventeenth century most artists had viewed printmaking (or Graphics as they are also known nowadays) as a preparatory technique, using the medium to create sketches for their final paintings.

The Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was one of the first artists to use printmaking as a form of art in its own right. Although initially a painter, he became devoted to the medium of etching; creating approximately three hundred etchings during his lifetime. His importance and renown within the art world in this context is of such significance that, when the medium was revived during the twentieth century, artists such as Picasso fervently aspired to be as skilled as him in this medium and, during the 1930s went on to create, amongst many fine art graphics, a series of etchings which featured imagery of Rembrandt.

The series was entitled ‘The Vollard Suite’, named after the renowned art dealer and critic Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) who commissioned and published it. Vollard was one of the most important art dealers of the early twentieth century, and worked with artists such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). Importantly, it was Vollard who pioneered the idea of painter as printer, bringing printmaking back into fashion and establishing it as a reputable art form that artists enjoyed and enthusiastically used. As Vollard himself commented: “…the painters themselves became more and more interested in the new form of expression. Some of them even made complete albums for me…”

After the Second World War the centre of printmaking predominantly moved from Europe to America and some artists began to dedicate their entire oeuvres to print, which came to be viewed on the same level as painting and sculpture. Indeed, artists such as Andy Warhol (1928-1987) were committed to the medium – repeating an image in many different colour-ways – just as Bob Dylan has done in his works years later.

As part of this tradition, and continuing it into the twenty-first century, a carefully selected collection of Dylan’s paintings have been chosen to be published as Signed Limited Edition Graphics to enable collectors, and art lovers throughout the world, access to Bob Dylan’s works of art.