Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 7

August Mosca
Geometric Abstract American Oil WPA Color Field Abstraction Modern Non Objective

1930s

About the Item

Geometric Abstract American Oil Painting WPA Color Field Abstraction Modern Non Objective. August Mosca was born in Naples, Italy on August 19, 1909. He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1911. He attended Yale School of Fine Arts in 1924 -1926, before moving to New York City where he attended Pratt Institute (1929). While living in his studio on Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street in 1931, he studied at the Art Students League with Harry Wickey. In 1932, he studied at Grand Central Art School and made his first trip to study in Italy. After meeting Joseph Stella in 1937, Stella introduced him to the silverpoint medium which he perfected throughout his life. 1939 saw the completion of Mr. Mosca's first paintings of New York City bridges and subways. He received the California Palace Legion of Honor Medal and Took part in Metropolitan Museum of Artexhibition "Portrait of America" during the mid-1940s. His first solo exhibit was at Salpeter Gallery in New York City, where he showed annually from 1959 through 1969 and 1961 marked a one man show at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. Butler Institute of American Art, Library of Congress, and Brooklyn Museum (two silverpoint drawings) acquired his work during that time. During the 1970s, Mr. Mosca had solo exhibits at New York Cultural Center, Fordham University, and FAR Gallery (NYC). His work was acquired by Grey Collection of New York University, Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, NY), and New York Public Library. He received the President's Award in the Audubon Annual, the Barney Paiser Award, and the Purchase Prize in the Society of American Graphics Artists Annual. In 1978, the Association of American Artists commissioned two lithographs. In 1987, East End Arts Council held a one man exhibition of silverpoint drawings and produced a cable television show in conjunction with the exhibit. He participated in "Impressionism and Post-Impressionism" and "New York: Empire City in the Age of Urbanism 1875 - 1945" exhibits, in 1988, at Grand Central Art Galleries, followed by "August Mosca, A Fifty Year Retrospective Exhibit" in 1990.. August Mosca found his inspiration in the Florentine and Northern Italian schools of the Renaissance which he studied on many trips to Italy. He learned that drawing is the most important part of painting, bringing this knowledge back to the emerging modernism being explored in New York City. Joseph Stella made a lasting impression on the young August Mosca. Stella encouraged him to paint the city in a form which would reflect himself. Drawing the bridges of New York, Mosca said "After many attempts to capture the fright this bridge inspired in me, I eventually arrived at this mood of translucent tranquility and awesome quietude as I looked long at the criss-crosses, struts, and stresses". 17 x 13 inches oil on canvas. Signed lower right.
  • Creator:
    August Mosca (1909 - 2002, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1930s
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 25 in (63.5 cm)Width: 21 in (53.34 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU115625094812
More From This SellerView All
  • Geometric Abstract American Oil WPA Color Field Abstraction Modern Non Objective
    By Walter Quirt
    Located in New York, NY
    American artist Walter Quirt painted this modernist non objective geometric abstract oil color field during the WPA era in the 1930s. Abstraction, 12 x 16 inches. Oil on canvas. Sig...
    Category

    1930s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Abstraction" Mid-Century Abstract Non-Objective Color Field oil painting modern
    Located in New York, NY
    "Abstraction" Mid-Century Abstract Non-Objective Color Field oil painting modern James Daugherty (1887 – 1974) "Abstraction," 28 ½ x 20 inches. Estate...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • MODERNIST ABSTRACT Mid-Century New Hope Non-Objective oil American Modern WPA
    By Louis Stone
    Located in New York, NY
    MODERNIST ABSTRACT Mid-Century New Hope Non-Objective oil American Modern WPA Louis Stone (1902-1984) "Abstract," 16 X 12 inches. Oil on canvas, signed lower right. An abstract pai...
    Category

    1940s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Abstract Non Objective Mid 20th Century American Modern Color Field 1950s
    Located in New York, NY
    Abstract Non Objective Mid 20th Century American Modern Color Field 1950s James Daugherty (1887 – 1974) Abstraction 84-1/2 x 42-1/2 inches Signed and ...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Red to Black, 1954 Abstract Oil Mid-20th Century Modern Non-Objective. Published
    By O. Louis Guglielmi
    Located in New York, NY
    Red to Black, 1954 Abstract Oil Mid-20th Century Modern Non-Objective. Published. Signed and dated upper left. 40 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches oil on canvas. Provenance: Estate of O. Louis Guglielmi. Robert Schoelopf Gallery. Andrew Crispo Gallery. Published in the artist's monograph as seen in the attached photos. BIO Painter O. Louis Guglielmi moved stylistically from a symbolic Social Realism, Precisionism, and Surrealism, ultimately to abstraction, but his subject matter, when it existed, dealt with society's underdogs. He had experienced slum living as a youth, moving from place to place because of his violinist father's need to find employment. Though Guglielmi was born in 1906 in Cairo, Egypt, his Italian parents moved the family to Italy. In 1914, they were living in New York City in Harlem's Italian slum. Guglielmi was involved in the political and artistic protests of the trial, conviction as anarchist bombers, and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Radiant Reflections Abstract 1950s Oil Mid 20th Century American Woman Artist
    By Irene Rice Pereira
    Located in New York, NY
    Radiant Relections. Abstract Non-Objective 1950s Oil Mid 20th Century American Woman Female Artist. Signed lower right. Provenance: Estate of Foy C. Casper, Norfolk, Virginia (a close personal friend of the artist and a former director of the Irene Rice-Pereira Foundation). Sothebys American art sale October 10, 2008. The canvas measures 50 x 40. The work has been restored, relined and is housed in its original frame, made by the artist's second husband, George Wellington Brown, a marine engineer from Boston. BIO Periera was an American abstract artist, poet, and philosopher who played a significant role in the development of modernism in America. She is known for her work in the Geometric abstraction, Abstract expressionist, and lyrical abstraction genres and her use of the principles of the Bauhaus school. She helped found the Federal Art Project...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like
  • Escandalo
    Located in Miami, FL
    Johannes Boekhoudt is a Dutch artist born on October 20, 1966. In 1973, Boekhoudt immigrated with his parents to Costa Rica, eventually working as a commercial and air ambulance pilo...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • Still Life- Abstract Floral Geometric Contemporary Modern Oil Painting on Canvas
    Located in New York, NY
    Medium Sized Floral Abstract Geometric Oil Painting on Canvas. BIO: Carrie Johnson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in the Chicago subur...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Night Bloom- Abstract Geometric Contemporary Modern Oil Painting on Canvas
    Located in New York, NY
    Medium Sized Abstract Geometric Oil Painting on Canvas. BIO: Carrie Johnson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in the Chicago suburbs. She ...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Voice of The Forest
    By Kunihiko Maehara
    Located in Fairfield, CT
    Represented by George Billis Gallery. When a simple vertical line finds itself in the midst of accidental organic chaos, a sense of directionality and stability is introduced. The l...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • Ripples in Space - Abstract Composition Original Oil Painting
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Ripples in Space - Abstract Composition Original Oil Painting Vibrant abstract composition of paint, paper, enamel, and glitter by unknown artist "DeZulio" or "Dejulio". Several pie...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Enamel

  • Divide
    By Doug Freed
    Located in Tulsa, OK
    Divide by artist Doug Freed is a deep blue contemporary abstract landscape oil on canvas painting that measures 72 x 96 and is priced at $18,000. Doug Freed attempts to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. In his luminescent multi-paneled oil paintings Freed tries to find the gray area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields. Artist Statement For nearly twenty years, I made non-objective grid structured paintings. I started to see references to landscape in these works. I've literalized those references by painting oil landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water. These paintings consist of two or more vertical panels. Usually one panel is landscape imagery. The adjacent panels are often atmospheric voids with vestiges of recognizable landscapes. I try to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. My intent is to create paintings imbued with a meditative, spiritual presence suggesting issues about time and ecology. I do this by softly modulating color, tone and value. The color varies from quiet, monochromatic works to fully orchestrated chromatic ones. By blending from one hue to another I create color which makes its self gradually felt, weeping forth. In this manner, I create illusions of mysterious emanations of light, places where ones eyes and spirit are invited to linger. I try to imbue my work with a monumental presence, epic in both size and scope. I do this by orchestrating the separate elements of color, texture and structure into a harmonious whole. I seek a somewhat reductive image rich in value and contrast. The surface of the work is devoid of textural incidence. I don’t want anything to distract from the illusion of depth so I deny any marks which would hold the viewer on the surface of the painting. In my luminescent multi- paneled oil paintings I try to find the grey area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields. The compositions are about ambiguities of form and void, foreground and background and surface and deep space. My roots lie in tonalism, color field painting and minimalism. However, my work contains an ever-present awareness of the dramatic use of light of the post-renaissance chiaroscurists. It combines a classical awareness of structure with a romantic use of color always in combination with a unique sense of ambiguity. My work continues in its evolution of style the search for an abstract means of probing the ambiguities of physical and spiritual experience of light, and its power to foster a more intense life of the spirit through profound emotional experience of form, color and composition. SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS K.U. Medical Center, Wichita, KS Museum of Art & Archeology University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri Hoecht Marion Roussel (Commission), Kansas City, Missouri FBL Financial Group, Des Moines, IA Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, Kansas Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Steinberg Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas College of Architecture and Design, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas Fort Hays, Kansas State University, Hays, Kansas Memorial Union Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri Norman R. Eppink Art Gallery, Emporia State University,, Emporia, Kansas Hutchinson Community College, Hutchinson, Kansas Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas Lincoln College, Lincoln, Illinois State Fair Community College, Sedalia, Missouri Hallmark Cards Inc., Kansas City, Missouri Sprint Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri MacGraw Hill Publishing Co., New York City, New York Pioneer Hybrid, Des Moines, Iowa Pella Corporation, Pella, Iowa Fort Smith Public Library (Commission), Fort Smith, Arkansas Deloitte & Touche (Commission), St. Louis, Missouri Publishing Enterprises, Inc. (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri Parks & Recreation Department, Columbia, Missouri United Telephone Systems, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri American Family Doctors, National Headquarters, Kansas City, Missouri DST Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri Crown Center, Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, Missouri Hewlett Packard Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri Emerson Electric (Commission), St. Louis, Missouri Mark Twain Bank, Creve Coeur, Missouri Boone County Bank, Columbia, Missouri Landmark Bank, Madill, Oklahoma Septagon Industries (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri KEO Building Corporation (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri D & W Leasing, Sedalia, Missouri 1st National Bank, Rockford, Illinois Mark Twain Bank Shares, Ladue, Missouri Bank of Olathe, Olathe, Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri Cessna Aircraft...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

Recently Viewed

View All