Two (2) Carroll Cloar (American/Tennessee/Arkansas, 1913-1993) offset lithographs, one signed. 1st item: "Historic Encounter Between E.H. Crump and W.C. Handy on Beale Street." Signed "Carroll Cloar" in pencil and editioned 266/300 to lower margin. R & W Gallery Memphis, TN label en verso. Image: 17 1/2" H x 27 1/2" W. Framed: 27 1/2" H x 36" W. 2nd item: "Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog." Label with title and label for Brooks Memorial Art Gallery to lower edge en verso. Unsigned. Sight: 13 3/8" H x 19 5/8" W. Framed: 24" H x 30 1/2" W. Both pieces matted under glass in gilt-decorated frames. Biographical note: Carroll Cloar's work is celebrated for capturing "the essence of a vanishing South" (Marilyn Sadler, "The Art and Life of Carroll Cloar," Memphis Magazine, June 1, 2011). The artist was known for incorporating nostalgic images, often from his Southern childhood, sometimes merged with dreamlike motifs, into powerful magic realist scenes, and he often noted that literature, particularly by Southern Gothic writers such as William Faulkner or Eudora Welty, influenced his artistic approach. Born in Arkansas, Cloar graduated from Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis, Tennessee, and went on to study at the Memphis Academy of Arts under the artist George Oberteuffer. In 1936, he moved to New York to attend the Art Students League. There, Cloar's achievements earned him a MacDowell fellowship which he used to travel across the American Southwest, West Coast, and Mexico. Cloar served with the Army Air Corps during World War II and upon his return was awarded a Guggenheim traveling scholarship to fund an extended sojourn to Central and South America. Two years later, several of his images were featured in a Life Magazine article titled Backwoods Boyhood, and Cloar's work began to earn national acclaim. By the mid-1950s, he had settled permanently in Memphis, where he produced paintings, often executed in casein tempera and acrylic paints. His works are in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooks Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress. In 1993, Cloar's painting, Faculty and Honor Students, Lewis Schoolhouse, was one of six paintings by American artists selected to commemorate the inauguration of President Clinton. (Sources: The Johnson Collection/Memphis Brooks Museum of Art).

Both overall very good condition. 2nd item with slight waviness to paper.