Dick Swift is an American printmaker and illustrator known for his experimentation with different printing techniques during a brief printmaking revival in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 60s. This hardbound album contains 14 rare images of Swift’s early pen drawings, long before he developed the more representational printmaking style he became known for. These drawings show the seed of the artist’s skill and the themes he would later hone-in on and develop. Likely done during his time at Chouinard Art Institute, the first formal education he received, Swift casts a large net for inspiration; the influence of genres such as surrealism and art nouveau paired with cynical social criticisms make up these more literal early works. The drawings mostly contain a caricaturization of Hollywood debauchery. A witness to the squalor and sleaze of Los Angeles at the time, Swift's drawings are deeply moralistic: “Skid Row” and “Bald-Headed Row” depict crowded night-life scenes with neanderthal-esque men ogling scantily clad women. Other captions such as “Praise the Lord and Pass The Ammunition,” “With Liberty and Justice For All,” and “Aimee Semple McPherson gives an illustrated lecture” are a clue into the artist’s disillusion with the government and the Catholic upbringing. Two drawings show a specific dystopian future of completely automated factories creating humans on an assembly line, while other drawings contain surreal nightmarish hellscapes of suffering or more realistic incidents of everyday cruelties. This well-preserved and neatly-bound album is an interesting look into the untreated and naive ideas of the young artist before his many mentorships.

Richard "Dick" Swift, Jr. was born in Long Beach, California on January 29, 1918. He attended Chouinard Art Institute before moving to New York to study under artists such as Reginald Marsh, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Morris Kantor at the prestigious Art Students’ League. He returned to California in 1946 to continue his studies at multiple art institutions in Los Angeles and received his M.F.A. in 1957 from Claremont College. In his later career, Swift taught at Occidental College, California State University at Long Beach, and Chouinard Art Institute. He died in June 2010 but his prints continue to be exhibited and auctioned internationally. Swift’s work can be found in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Worcester Art Museum.