From Book News, Inc.
A comprehensive directory dealing solely with artists' monograms and signatures that are difficult to identify, including 5,200 signatures of 3,700 artists worldwide and offering information on nationality, birth and death dates, and a broad listing of reference sources from standard and secondary publications. The signatures fall into six specific categories: monograms, symbols, Cyrillic signatures, illegible signatures, common last names, and alternative surnames. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Book Description
Includes 5,200 signatures of 3,700 artists worldwide, listing nationality, birth and death dates, and reference sources. ...more up to date than H.H. Caplan's...and Radway Jackson's...and it contains a larger number of difficult signatures...recommended... --CHOICE

About the Author
John Castagno (Art education at The Fleisher Memorial; Philadelphia College of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA) has been an art researcher for the past 25 years and is also a multi-media artist and sculptor. His art is exhibited in more than 40 museum and public collections in the U.S., Israel, and Ireland, as well as in the private collections of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. He also lectures on art and on art as an investment.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This is the first comprehensive book dealing solely with artists' monograms and signatures that are difficult to identify. This volume includes some 5,200 signatures of 3,700 artists worldwide, with information on nationality and the most up-to-date birth and death dates, and a broad listing of reference sources. The identities of artists who sign their work with monograms or indiscernible signatures are not common knowledge, and identification has always been a particular problem for researchers, collectors, dealers, and art and auction galleries. This volume covers most of the art sales of more than twenty-five of the leading auction galleries in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and the Continent, as well as numerous art publications and exhibits. With special chapters for monograms and initials; symbols and oriental signatures; Cyrillics; illegible signatures/monograms/initials and Hebraic; alternate surname signatures; and common last name signatures. |

Author Biography: John Castagno (Art education at The Fleisher Memorial; Philadelphia College of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA) has been an art researcher for the past 25 years and is also a multi-media artist and sculptor. His art is exhibited in more than 40 museum and public collections in the U.S., Israel, and Ireland, as well as in the private collections of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. He also lectures on art and on art as an investment.

FROM THE CRITICS

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