CHARLES ADDAMS, (AMERICAN 1912-1988)
FRAMED ORIGINAL DRAWING OF PUGSLEY ADDAMS, CHASING A TWO-HEADED CAT
A SCARCE ORIGINAL DRAWING SIGNED AND DATED BY CHARLES ADDAMS W. COA/LOA, RENDERED IN PEN AND INK ON BLUE PAPER
THE PIECE IS PRESENTED IN A NEW BLACK GLOSS FRAME AND WAS CUSTOM MATTED, FRAMED AND GLAZED. A VERY STUNNING PIECE!
A fantastic original signed and dated drawing by Charles Addams of a zany Pugsley running after a two-headed cat. Addams created this character who he described as “”An energetic monster of a boy… blond red hair, popped blue eyes and a dedicated troublemaker, in other words the kid next door… genius in his own way, he makes toy guillotines, full-size racks, threatens to poison his sister, can turn himself into a Mr. Hyde with an ordinary chemical set… his voice is hoarse… is sometimes allowed an occasional cigar” Pugsley first appeared in the Charles Addams cartoons in The New Yorker during the 1930s.
Signed, and dated by Charles Addams as “with affection / Chas Addams / New York / 4 Oct 1950”. The piece is presented in a new black gloss frame and was newly custom double matted in a soft pale grey mat, framed and glazed using all archival materials, and UV glass. The art will come with a Certificate of Authenticity (LOA/COA), from James Spence, LLC. A premier authentication house (please see images).
***Note, original artworks by Charles Addams are coveted, expensive and scarce. The most recent sale of an original piece by Addams featuring Morticia which he created for an interior page of one of his books, recently sold at auction for $87,500.00. (Examples of his fan sketches are all small line drawings on stationary and sell for $5,000). This original is a wonderful piece for a lover of the Addams family.
FRAMED SIZE: 16.5″ X 16″
ART SHEET SIZE BY SIGHT: 7″ X 7.5″
CONDITION: Slight age toning and touch of soft wrinkling, else near fine.
With a proclivity to the grim, grisly and gruesome, Charles Addams walked through life illuminating its incongruous funny bones and sore spots. Addams contributed to The New Yorker for more than fifty years, and his work can be found in the permanent collections of The New York Public Library and The Library of Congress. In 1935 Addams was hired by The New Yorker as a regular cartoonist. The pay was modest—just $35 per cartoon—but the magazine allowed him to explore his voice and imagination as well as hone the dark humor that would come to define his work. His famous, “creepy and kooky” Addams Family, later adapted for television and film productions. He demonstrated an appreciation for the macabre at an early age. He had a deep fascination for coffins and skeletons, as well as a good practical joke. “We had a dumbwaiter in our house,” he later recounted, “and I’d get inside on the ground floor, and then very quietly I’d haul myself up to grandmother’s floor, and then I’d knock on the door, and when she came to open the door, I’d jump out and scare the wits out of her.”
Addams’s mind went to dark, ghoulish places few cartoonists would allow themselves to venture. His popularity extended to some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Cary Grant wanted to meet the man who called himself “A Defrocked Ghoul,” as did Alfred Hitchcock, who once showed up at Addams’s New York home unannounced to see the cartoonist in the flesh. The “Addams family” cartoons delighted in turning upside down our assumptions about normality and its relationship to good and evil. Charles Addams tapped into the vein of American gothic that has a touch of paranoia about it, seeing behind every comforting façade the uncomfortable truth about the duality of human nature. But where Gothic literature usually combined these themes with romance, Addams made the horror hilarious: disturbing, but at the same time friendly, identifiable, and acceptable.
**PLEASE NOTE NO INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING AT THIS TIME
