PBA Galleries

John DePol and Don Fleming were long time friends, and as a result DePol constantly sent Fleming many of his woodcut ilustrations, which he would inscribe and or sign in pencil for Don. In the collection which is housed in expansion files within a large file box, there are over 125 signed woodcut prints, and many other pieces of ephemera, broadsides and announcements with DePol woodcuts, some signed. Don Fleming worked with DePol and contributed a foreword to the Book Club of California Catalogue Raisonne of De Pol and as a result knew his work well. The archive is full of correspdondence from DePol, long letters narrating artistic events in his life, projects he is working on, and constantly worrying, "will there ever be enough time to finish them all". In total there are several hundred items and one cannot imagine an archive with more personally connected material between the artist and his collector friend. Please call for more details about the archive. Certainly should be inspected to understand the true value within.

John DePol was born in 1913, in New York, but did not begin his self-taught printmaking career until 1935 when he built a crude etching press out of a clothes wringer and a few pieces of pipe. After his career was interupted with military service, DePol returned to New York City and was brought in touch with The Typophiles and the printing company L.F. White Co. Before that association, DePol had produced nearly 150 wood engraved prints and more than 70 etchings, lithographs and vignettes for over 200 books and pamphlets. In 1997 the Book Club of California proposed a catalogue raisonne be undertaken which took over a year examining his own material for cataloging. Over the years, DePol created woodcut illustrations for many fine presses such as the Allen Press, Hammer Creek Press, Pickering Press, Red Ozier Press and The Yellow Barn Press. John DePol died in 2004.