shag-The-Triumph-evel-knievel

The Triumph of Evel

2023
14 color Hand-Pulled Silk-Screened Serigraph Print on Thick fine art cotton rag paper
Edition of 200 copies plus proofs. Numbered and signed by Shag
92 x 63 cm

Not available for USA and Australia online purchases

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Description

The crazy motorcycle stunt man EVEL KNIEVEL was a celebrity in the 60s and early 70s. Evel wasn’t as well known in Spain as he became elsewhere but his contempt for death made him a hero across the world. Clad in a patriotic star-spangled jumpsuit, he became an idol of the crowds that watched him jump over buses or fly across Caesar’s Palace Fountain in Las Vegas resulting in 30 broken bones. Shag was one such kid that was dazzled by these heroics and now the artist dedicates to THE TRIUMPH OF EVEL to him and the silkscreen print is produced with full permission from the Knievel family.

With regard to availability of any Shag prints, you can enquire if we can supply a hand signed, numbered artist proof with a certificate of authenticity issued by La Fiambrera. The serigraphs prices increase (sometimes quickly) as the copies of any edition are sold. We recommend that if you’re thinking of acquiring this (or any other print by Shag) then please act fast. Editions disappear fast and the longer you might leave it, in case Shag can indeed send us a copy for you, the price would likely be much higher.

shag

SHAG, Josh Agle (Sierra Madre, California, 1962)     

American artist Josh Agle is better known as Shag (an acronym made by combining the last two letters of his first name and the first two of his surname).

Agle studied architecture in the 1980s but later switched to graphic design, becoming a successful commercial illustrator for clients like Time and Forbes and designing album covers for several California bands, including his own. In 1995, Otto von Stroheim—editor of Tiki News and organiser of the Tiki Oasis festival—invited him to contribute a work to a group show in Santa Monica, where it caught the attention of Billy Shire, a collector and owner of La Luz de Jesus Gallery. He participated in a collective exhibition there in 1996, and his artistic career took off. According to Shire, Shag “created what could be called a whole new genre: twenty-first century hipster cool”. He soon became a cult figure and leading exponent of the Lowbrow movement, and over the years he has become a successful artist whose work is collected by Ben Stiller, Whoopi Goldberg and many other Hollywood celebrities and exhibited in the finest galleries of New York, Los Angeles and Sydney.

His prolific work as a commercial illustrator includes a series of paintings commissioned by Disney to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Disney World.

Shag’s art features scenes tinged with irony and mischievous humour, rendered in a distinctive style inspired by the commercial illustrations of the 1950s and 60s. His paintings, with their vivid colours and kitsch aesthetic, are an ode to consumerism and the good life; his characters drink, smoke and eat in stylish, sophisticated settings, in houses designed by Richard Neutra or John Lautner and furnished by Eames, Eero Saarinen, Arne Jacobson and George Nelson.

Shag also finds aesthetic and artistic inspiration in early James Bond films, David Bailey’s photographs of “Swinging London” and the work of artists like Robert Williams (founder of Juxtapoz magazine), Keith Haring and Mark Ryden, whom he greatly admires.