Alvin C Hollingsworth Dream the Impossible Dream Cervantes

Description: Alvin C. Hollingsworth (American, 1928-2000)Dream the Impossible Dream lithograph, pencil signed and titled visible image measures approximately: 17 1/4" W x 20 3/4" Hframe measures approximately: 22 1/4" W x 26 1/4" H About the Print Hollingsworth’s lithograph “Dream the Impossible Dream” illustrates literary characters created by Spanish writer Cervantes and is titled after a popular American mid-20th century Broadway show tune that had resonance for the era. “Dream the Impossible Dream” references a modern mid-20th century interpretation of Cervantes’ work, the musical Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman. “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” by Mitch Leigh with lyrics by Joe Darion was the principle song in both the musical and a later film version by the same name. The song became a popular music standard almost immediately, reaching No. 1 in 1966, and has been recorded multiple times since its debut. Man of La Mancha, a comic tragedy, was a 1964 adaptation by Wasserman of his 1959 play for television entitled I, Don Quixote. It is not a retelling of Cervantes’ book, but relates the story of Cervantes, a tax collector and author jailed and awaiting trial by the Spanish Inquisition, who attempts to save the manuscript of his novel Don Quixote from confiscation by his fellow prisoners. He offers a defense in the form of a play, performed by Cervantes and his servant Sancho, with help from the other prisoners. Moved by his story, they return his manuscript just as Cervantes is summoned to his real trial. The theme of the Tony award-winning musical reflected the idealism of the tumultuous decade of the sixties that included the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the Vietnam War, and a search for social justice. The musical, which continues to be staged, has been revived on Broadway multiple times, the last in 2002, and its 50th anniversary was commemorated by many theaters in 2015. In 1972 it was adapted into a film by the same name, starring Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren, which boosted its popularity even further. The musical and its story resonated with Hollingsworth, as well as with other African American leaders and artists. The song, “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” was played at the funeral of Whitney M. Young, Jr. (1921-1971), Executive Director of the National Urban League, because it was one of his favorites. He carried the words in his wallet and quoted phrases of the song in his speeches. The Motown group The Temptations recorded “The Impossible Dream” in 1967 and sang it with the Supremes in a 1968 television special – perhaps an echo of the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated in April 1968. The Impossible Dreammusic by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion To dream the impossible dreamTo fight the unbeatable foeTo bear with unbearable sorrowTo run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrongTo love pure and chaste from afarTo try when your arms are too wearyTo reach the unreachable star This is my questTo follow that starNo matter how hopelessNo matter how far To fight for the rightWithout question or pauseTo be willing to march into HellFor a heavenly cause And I know if I’ll only be trueTo this glorious questThat my heart will lie peaceful and calmWhen I’m laid to my rest And the world will be better for thisThat one man, scorned and covered with scarsStill strove with his last ounce of courageTo reach the unreachable star About Alvin C. Hollingsworth Alvin Hollingsworth, comic-strip illustrator and painter, was born in New York City and began drawing at the age of four, and by the time he was twelve, he was an artist assistant at Holyoke Publishing Company for Catman's Comics. A year later he was doing illustrations for Crime Comics. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City and then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College of New York with a fine arts degree. NBC network hired him to tour the East Coast lecturing and demonstrating painting and to host a ten-part series, "You're Part of Art." As a result, he became a widely known figure in the art world. Circa 1941, he began illustrating for crime comics. Since it was not standard practice during this era for comic-book credits to be given routinely, comprehensive credits are difficult to ascertain; Hollingsworth's first confirmed comic-book work is the signed, four-page war comics story "Robot Plane" in Aviation Press' Contact Comics #5 (cover-dated March 1945), which he both penciled and inked. Through the remainder of the 1940s, he confirmably drew for Holyoke's Captain Aero Comics (as Al Hollingsworth), and Fiction House's Wings Comics, where he did the feature "Suicide Smith" at least sporadically from 1946 to 1950. He is tentatively identified under the initials "A. H." as an artist on the feature "Captain Power" in Novack Publishing's Great Comics in 1945. By 1953, he was creating his own comic strip that was nationally syndicated by the Associated Press in one-hundred forty newspapers. In the mid-1950s, he worked on newspaper comic strips including the 1955 Kandy, from the Smith-Mann Syndicate, as well as Scorchy Smith and, with George Shedd, Martin Keel. Hollingsworth was a member of the prominent Spiral group. Spiral was formed in 1963 in the New York studio of Romare Bearden. Spiral members aimed to address civil and human rights concerns and show support for the Civil Rights Movement. They did not, however, want to adhere to strict aesthetic criteria or compromise their artistic individuality. Spiral also included Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Richard Mayhew, Reginald Gammons and others. In the late 1960s, early 1970s, Hollingsworth created a series of murals for the Don Quixote apartment building in the Bronx, NYC, and a series of six lithographs by the same theme and title. The lithograph offered here is part of that series. Hollingsworth had also worked as comic-strip illustrator. He was born in New York City, where he received a fine arts degree from the City College of New York. Hollingsworth taught at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. From 1980 until his retirement in 1998, Hollingsworth was a full Professor of Art at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.

Price: 750 USD

Location: Chicago, Illinois

End Time: 2025-01-16T02:12:14.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD