CHARLES ADDAMS

CHARLES ADDAMS, (AMERICAN 1912-1988)

FRAMED ORIGINAL BOLD FELT TIP DRAWING OF WEDNESDAY ADDAMS

AN EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE, SCARCE 10″ STUNNING DRAWING OF WEDNESDAY ADDAMS W. COA/LOA

THE ART IS IN FINE CONDITION AND WAS CUSTOM MATTED, FRAMED AND GLAZED. A VERY STUNNING PIECE!

FRAMED SIZE: 18″ X 11″

A bold, enormous original Charles Addams drawing in felt tip on heavy paper stock, signed by Charles Addams along the bottom as “Chas Addams”. The piece was matted such as only the drawing of Wednesday and the signature are showcased (with the balance of the page located beneath the mat which had the rest of the original inscription). This fantastic piece showcases a HUGE 10″ size drawing of Wednesday in strong vibrant black felt tip, in a classic pose, with her long stringy hair (extremely scarce as the rare few original Addam’s sketches tend to be 4″ or less in size). This is the largest we have seen! The art was custom matted, framed and glazed and is presented in a black wood rubbed gloss frame (using archival materials and UV glass). The piece will come with a Certificate of Authenticity (LOA/COA), from PSA/DNA. A premier authentication house (please see images). Note, Addams sketches are extremely scarce, and are more typically rendered as much smaller pen and inks.

CONDITION: The page has two lines of very small inconspicuous little perforation holes running horizontal to the page, else near fine with slight toning to the paper, more prominent to the lower edge.

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.

A very stunning piece and showcases very well. The unique mat creates a half round oval along the top setting off the artwork! Perfect for the collector/lover of Charles Addams. Please note that original published artwork by Charles Addams has recently seen lofty price increases with auction prices of his published artwork at recently selling at auction for upwards of $70,000, and other much smaller sketches have sold in the $7500 range!

FRAMED SIZE: 18″ X 11″

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