Richard Hamilton b. 1922

Screenprint in colours, 1970, signed in pencil, numbered 1403/5000, published by Dorothea Leonhart, Munich, on Schoeler-Durex paper, with full margins, in good condition apart from a slight crease at upper right corner of sheet

Etienne Lullin notes in Richard Hamilton  Prints and Multiples 1939-2002 catalogue Raisonné, Kunst Museum , Winterthur , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2003,  page 102  that "In 1969 the Munich art dealer Dorothea Lockhart, asked Hamilton if he would produce a print for her in a large edition...In looking for source material Hamilton..said "it has been on my mind that there may be a subject staring me in the face from the TV screen."..He set up a camera and watched television every evening for a week in May 1970, a shutter release in his hand. There were many potential topics..then in the middle of the week, there came about the shameful bloodshed at Kent State University in the state of Ohio, when National Guardsmen opened fire on students demonstrating against the Vietnam War.... after some soul-searching he decided to work with this highly charged subject because he felt that art could keep the memory of the mindless horror alive".