Edna Hibel (1917-2014) American, Large Artist's Proof Lithograph. Depicts a family portrait bordered by scenes of domestic life. Titled "3 Sons." Signed in pencil lower right. Words "Artists Proof" written in pencil bottom left. The lack of any numbering probably means this is a one-of-a-kind piece. Framed. Certificate attached to the back dated 1996 showing it was purchased from the Village Gallery in Venice, Florida.

Overall Size: 53 x 40 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 43 x 30 in.

Edna Hibel (also known as Edna Plotkin) was born on January 13th, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She began to study watercolors when she was eight years old, and graduated from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts in 1939. She then studied in Mexico on a fellowship, heavily inspired by the countryside and the work of Abraham Maslow. Here she met and married Theodore Plotkin, with whom she spent the rest of her life until his death in 2012. Although she took his last name, she routinely signed her works with her maiden name, and frequently cited archaic societal norms and rampant misogyny in the art world for her often-overlooked career. She shifted her focus to lithographs in 1966, but continued to paint portraits of men and women in heavy contemplation on ceramic, canvas, and Bavarian limestone, sometimes creating porcelain transfer lithographs. In 1995 the National Archives Foundation commissioned Hibel to paint a piece commemorating the 75th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, and in 2011 she was lauded in several arts magazines and circles as the first known female artist in history to paint in ten different decades. She died on December 5th, 2014 in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, having just finished her final work the day before. A large collection of Hibel’s art was held at the Hibel Museum of Art on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida until 2018, when most of it was transferred to the Wright Museum of Art at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where it is still on permanent display.