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This lot features the following piece of artwork: New York Is Book Country Poster

Artist: Maurice Sendak
Medium: Commercial lithography
Year: 1988
Dimensions: Unframed, measures 18 1/2" by 24"

Details/Condition: Maurice Bernard Sendak (born June 10, 1928) is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book "Where the Wild Things Are,"published in 1963. Sendak gained international acclaim after writing and illustrating "Where the Wild Things Are," a Caldecott Medal-winning picture book about a boy banished to his bedroom without his supper. He deals with his anger by imagining himself king of an island filled with enormous, frightening monsters. Critically acclaimed and controversial, Sendak is one of the first children's writers to deal frankly with the fears and anxieties of childhood. "Where the Wild Things Are" is the first in a trilogy, to be followed by "In the Night Kitchen" (1970) and "Outside over There" (1981), which, in Sendak's words, are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings--anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy--and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives."

Mr. Sendak's original drawings are constantly in demand by museums, art galleries and collectors everywhere. Although most of his original work is archived at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, his pictures are represented in many major collections around the world. It understates his importance to simply call him a genius in his field: he has been called "the Picasso of Children's Books", and for more than a half-century his work has been critically praised, admired and emulated. Retrospective exhibitions have been held at the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1975), the Pierpont Morgan library (New York, 1981), the Indianapolis Museum of Art (1999), the Brennan Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta (2001, a version of which went on national tour), the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Books (November 2002), Brandywine River Museum (2003), and most recently a remarkable survey of his art at the Jewish Museum (New York, 2005) covering both his book work and sets/costumes for opera and ballet, subsequently extending the show to the Tampa Art Museum in Florida (2006).

This is the Tenth Anniversary poster which coincidentally occurred during the 25th Anniversary of "Where the Wild Things Are" (1963), encouraging the artist to remember old New York's antiquarian book row: Biblio & Tannen, Dauber & Pine and Schultes Bookshop, Argosy and Samuel Weiser book stores still active but now relocated, with a giant Wild Thing gnawing at the celebratory bunting while reading Grimm's fairy tales, William Blake, &c. It was issued on September 18, 1988 to benefit Children's Services, New York Public Library. The work (listed in Hanrahan as C18b) is HAND SIGNED by the artist; shows faint wrinkle in upper left outside image area. It should be noted that all of the Sendak posters in this auction come directly from the artist's own archive. Shipping cost (within the U.S.) for this lot will be: $9.50