Unknown

French Pop Art Modernist Textured Painting Abstract With Stencilled Letters

c.1980

PATRICK ARCHER (American b. 1926) Signed and dated at lower right, signed and titled on label verso. Abstract landscape with vibrant dayglo fluorescent colors Palm Beach Florida artist Patrick Archer (b. 1926). Archer studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts (MFA) Archer has exhibited widely including recent exhibitions at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, the Boca Raton Museum, and the Merrill Lynch Gallery in New York. Archer's work is in the collections of the Albright Knox Gallery (a work similar to the one offered here), Vero Beach Museum of Art, the Silvermine Guild, and the Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach. Taught Painting, Drawing, Design, Architecture, History & Appreciation, and introduced a concentrated program in Color and Theory (under the advisory-guidance of Faber Birren.) Worked directly with Reuben Hale, Jim Houser, Pat Slattery, Gene Arant, Richard Frank...

Alexander Raymond Katz (Hungarian-American, 1895-1974) initialed l.r. "A.R.K." inscribed verso "Prayer Tree", A Raymond Katz." Sight size: 39-3/4"h x 30"w Overall: 40-3/4"h x 30-3/4"w This is done in an Abstract Expressionist style with bold enamel like paint and applied ceramic or glass iridescent mosaic tiles. Alexander Raymond Katz, Hungarian / American (1895 – 1974) Alexander Raymond Katz was born in Kassa, Hungary, and came to the United States in 1909. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1920s, he worked as a director of the Poster Department at Paramount Studios. He was appointed the Director of Posters for the Chicago Civic Opera in 1930. A WPA muralist, illustrator and modernist painter especially known for paintings with Jewish themes and narrative American scene works. Many notable Jewish artists worked for the WPA amongst them Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Aaron Bohrod and many more. During the Great Depression, notable architect Frank Lloyd Wright urged Katz to become a muralist. In 1933, he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago. In 1936, he painted the mural History of the Immigrant for the Madison, Ill., post office. Katz’s works were included in various exhibitions and now are part of several museum collections, including those of the Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Jewish Museum, New York. His murals, bas-reliefs and stained glass designs adorn more than 200 Jewish synagogues in the United States. Katz and other Jewish artists in Chicago who expressed Jewish and Biblical themes were inspired by the artist Abel Pann (1883-1963). Pann, who is regarded as the leading painter of the Land of Israel, exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago in 1920. Early in his career, Katz began to explore the artistic possibilities inherent in the characters of the Hebrew alphabet. He developed aesthetic and philosophical interpretations of each letter and became the leading innovator and pioneer in the field of Hebraic art. Katz applies this concept in the woodcut Moses and the Burning Bush. Hebrew letters appears in Moses’ head, his cane and inside the flame. The initial of Moses’ name crowns his head. The letter in the flame is the first letter of the name of God. A combination of images and Hebrew letters appeared commonly in illustrations of the scene Moses and the Burning Bush in the Haggadah, the book of Passover. The symbolism of the burning bush corresponds to the motifs of A Gift to Biro-Bidjan. Among the fourteen participating artists were notable Chicago modernists Todros Geller, Mitchell Siporin, A. Raymond Katz, David Bekker...

David Hare Summer Land, 1970 Acrylic or oil paint and collage on board Dimensions: 26 X 36 inches. Framed measuring 29 x 38 inches. Hand signed, dated and titled on tape to verso 'Summer Land 1970 Hare'. Provenance: Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York David Hare (1917 – 1992) was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and oil painting. The VVV Surrealism Magazine was first published and edited by Hare in 1942. Born March 10, 1917 in New York City, New York to father Meredith Hare, a lawyer and mother Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector. In the 1920s the family moved first to Santa Fe, New Mexico and later to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in hope that the fresh air would help heal Meredith Hare's tuberculosis. His mother founded the Fountain Valley School, where David attended high school. After high school Hare married and moved to Roxbury, Connecticut where he worked as a color photographer. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson from 1936 to 1937, studying biology and chemistry. In the late 1930s, with no previous artistic training, he began to experiment with color photography. Using his previous education in chemistry Hare developed an automatist technique called "heatage" in which he heated the unfixed negative from an 8 by 10-inch plate, causing the image to ripple and distort. Hare's Surrealist experiments in photography were only one of his many projects. In 1938 he met Susanna Winslow Wilson and the couple soon married. Both David and Susanna pursued their interests in Surrealism and regularly attended Surrealist gatherings in New York Larre French restaurant on 56th street and at Breton's Greenwich Village apartment. In 1940 he received a commission from the American Museum of Natural History to document the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, for which he eventually produced 20 prints developed using Eastman Kodak's then-new dye transfer process (a time-consuming and complicated technique). In the same year, he also opened his own commercial photography studio in New York City and exhibited his photographs in a solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery. In the next few years, through his cousin the painter Kay Sage, he came into contact with a number of Surrealist artists who had fled their native Europe because of World War II. Hare became closely involved with the émigré Surrealist movement and collaborated closely with them on projects such as the Surrealist journal VVV, which he co founded and edited from 1941 to 1944 with André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. With numerous illustrations by Breton, Leonora Carrington, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Giorgio de Chirico, MarcelDuchamp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Enrico Donati, Dorothea Tanning, and others. Published in only four issues between 1942-44, VVV was an experimental New York-based magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism. Edited by David Hare, the short-lived magazine featured contributions from some of the leading avant-garde artists of the period. David and Susanna divorce in 1945 and Breton’s wife Jacqueline Lamba...

Philippe Visson, (1942-2008), whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of La Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1930 to 1960, and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major political journalist for The Washington Post and Roving Editor for The Reader’s Digest. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. At the Vissons, one devours; one spends beyond one’s means; one falls, but only to land on one’s feet. Visson is a painter to whom it is difficult to assign a particular movement in art history; and that, principally for two reasons: firstly, his origins,his education and his way of life have produced a personality without any true roots, but rather a citizen of the world, who carries with him all cultures, from pre-Revolutionary Russia to the black ghetto of Washington, D.C. Secondly, he is self-taught, and can work in complete solitude, as well as before a large audience. His art is therefore uniquely his own, and certainly not that of an Art Brut ‘author’. His faces, his anti-portraits, reveal a continuum of humanity’s facets: from Christ to the demon, from the child to the aged, from the Caucasion to the African. Biography Philippe Visson, whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of “The Gazette des Beaux-Arts” and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major American political journalist for “The Washington Post” and “The Readers Digest”. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. He starts to paint in the bathroom of Parisian luxury hotel at the age of 16, working in a frenzy and without art lessons. He’s immediately confronted with the scrutiny of professional experts that surround his parents. He has instant success when he shows at the Craven Gallery in Paris in December, 1958, quickly offered to him; then in New York in the Milch Galleries in May, 1959; followed by shows in Monte Carlo, Geneva and New York again. It was too much, too soon. Visson falls into drinking. Returning to Washington, D.C. on 1960, the period 1963-1979 is differentiated by a life that is sometimes social, sometimes reclusive, which continues when his family settles in a large villa in Switzerland (Epalinges above Lausanne) in the mid-sixties. Visson has stopped drinking. He paints in one of the rooms of his parents’ house and inundates all the empty rooms with his productions that remain hidden from the public, allowing them to be seen only by personalities such as Marcel Brion and René Huyghe, both of the Académie Française; or Jean Leymarie, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It’s only at the start of the seventies that he once again opens his work to the public. He meets several important cultural figures of the time, such as René Berger, Director of the State Fine Arts Museum of Lausanne; and Michel Thévoz, future Director of the Art brut Museum. After the death of his father in 1973, he settles without money with his mother in a luxury hotel in Paris. It’s only after a year and a half of perpetual and colorful adventures that they return to Washington, D.C., where he resumes painting and produces a unique period of abstracts. Returning to Switzerland at the death of his mother in the beginning of the eighties, Visson meets with blatant success in Switzerland, where institutions exhibit and purchase his paintings (Aarau State Fine Arts Museum, the Federal Office of Culture in Bern). His fury for painting takes the form of an explosion while remaining focused (he always keeps what he considers the best paintings for himself). After the life of a hermit in the Paccots, Visson comes down from his mountain to settle in Montreux on the Swiss Riveria. This moving is marked by a sort of return to social life, despite the fact that he paints in a cellar. A period of public projects with charitable goals is launched. Visson thrives on this contact with the public. This changes somewhat when he receives a working studio in The Montreux Palace in the late nineties. This emerging from the cellars denotes a new era for the artist. He starts an intense period of painting, and moves six thousand of his paintings to the Palace. He continues his public projects, including the acquisition against paintings of a Stradivarius violin...

Brian Kenny, (German-American, 1982-) MIxed Media Painting with Drawing, Oil or Acrylic on Canvas. Hand signed On Verso and Dated 2015, NYC Dimensions: Sight- 30" x 24", Frame- 36" x 30" Brian Kenny (born 1982, Heidelberg, Germany) is a NYC-based American multidisciplinary artist exhibited in galleries, museums, theaters and alternative venues in the US, Canada, Russia, Israel and across Europe. In 2004 Brian began an ongoing collaboration with artist Slava Mogutin as SUPERM, and in 2016 with writer Rich Juzwiak as BOYFRIEND HOUSE. Using an array of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, textile, video and performance, Brian’s artwork is bright and vividly expressionistic; often autobiographical and reflective of his current states of mind which include themes of his queer identity, shifting societal perceptions about gender, sexuality and politics, urban living and free-associative wanderings of thought and creative experimentation. New York-based artist Brian Kenny’s work is a visually striking exploration of gender, sexuality, and politics in contemporary North America. Known for his experimental and expressionistic practice, Brian mixes mediums such as painting, illustration, collage, sculpture, and textiles – oftentimes all at once. Brian’s foundation in drawing is evident across his portfolio, with nearly every piece incorporating some signature scribblings from the artist. He has experimented with drawing, collage, photography, performance and, more recently, painting. “All the other mediums I’m exploring like, painting, textile art, and animation all branch out from drawing,” he explains. This focus is what makes Brian’s vast collection of work all feel so cohesive. "Both of my parents were in the US military and we moved around a lot in the US. But most of the places I lived were rural, far from big cities and art museums, so I had no idea who Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Chuck Close, David Hockney or Damien Hirst were. The few small art museums I visited as a child were full of old-school oil paintings; all life-like portraits, rural landscapes and historical recreations. It wasn’t until I met Slava Mogutin and moved to New York that I began to meet artists, see exhibitions at art galleries of living artists near my age, and tour lot of contemporary art museums like MoMA and begin learning about contemporary art history". Brian says. “I’m definitely not a minimalist and lean toward more narrative and figurative artwork than abstraction or decoration”. Minimalist, he is not: Brian’s work pops with vibrant colours, characters and shapes, evoking a Warholian play on pop art culture. Kenny’s signature line drawing style is reminiscent of Keith Haring and LA Ortiz and evokes comparisons to early Jean Michel Basquiat. Brian's commercial and fashion work includes art and design commissions and collaborations with Onitsuka Tiger (Japan...

This depicts civil rights icon MLK, the Statue of Liberty, Iwo Jima, an assemblage of mixed media photographic images and painted collaged elements. A powerful, moving work, an ode to the black civil rights movement. John M. Mitchell is originally from North Carolina, and as an art student at North Carolina Central University, he was involved with the Civil Rights movement including participating and getting arrested at a sit-in protest in Durham in 1963. After graduating, he was one of the first art teachers to take a position at the newly integrated schools in his home state. Mitchell continued his education in the 1990s and earned an MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1993. He later served as a professor there from 1998-2006. Of his inspiration to create, Mitchell says: "A lot of my work is based on my experiences during the Civil Rights movement," he says. "I see art making as a 'record' of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus and narrative of my work." Savannah-based artist John Mitchell believes that a home is more than a simple edifice. Rather, he argues that the sociological, psychological, architectural, and historical associations embedded in the structure “tell us about our culture, our lives. It tells us about where we come from.” Mitchell's signature shotgun house constructions, crafted from found materials and scraps of newspaper headlines, reference his childhood in North Carolina, where such modest architectural structures were once commonplace. In "ALA 1963," he uses the shotgun shape to create a heartfelt memorial to a group of African-American girls killed in a racially motivated church bombing in Alabama nearly 50 years ago. He also incorporates the shotgun symbol in "Victims," a powerful reflection upon crime in Savannah in the early 1990s, which reveals how little has changed over the past two decades. Mitchell's mixed media constructions operate, in many ways, like memory itself. Scraps, fragments and pieces loosely cohere around a central idea, making symbolic and metaphorical connections. In these richly narrative and boldly stream-of-conscious assemblages, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Mitchell's jazz collages - carefully crafted from scraps of newspaper, sheet music, magazines and tissue paper - celebrate key players in Savannah's jazz scene, from sultry female vocalists to wiry male saxophone players. A tribute to the late jazz bassist Ben Tucker, a true Savannah legend, is especially moving, incorporating a pencil sketch of the standing bass player as well as newspaper clippings of other Savannah jazz musicians. Mitchell grew up in a shotgun house in North Carolina, a style of vernacular architecture that is particularly prevalent in the South. Mitchell fills his sculptural homes with objects of metaphorical and symbolic, iconic, importance. In Home Sweet Home he includes the American flag, a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and a china plate depicting The Last Supper, among other items that convey a personal and historical narrative. He notes that making art acts “as a ‘record’ of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus, and narrative of my work.” While this contains elements reminiscent of folk art and outsider art this is a quite sophisticated tour de force. He was included in the show Complex Uncertainties, Telfair Museum: Modern and contemporary art comprise painting, prints, drawing, photograph, sculpture, and works in new media, representing American artistic achievement from 1945 to the present day. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Bruce Davidson, Elaine de Kooning, Carrie Mae Weems, Sam Gilliam, Ethel Schwabacher, Radcliffe Bailey...

A painting by Sadamasa Motonaga. "Untitled" is an abstract painting, acrylic on board with cotton cloth in a bold palette or purples, reds, and blues...

A painting by Nathan Oliveira. "Mask" is a Post-War painting, acrylic, earth, and oil on canvas by Bay Area Figurative artist Nathan Oliveira. The artwork is signed and dated in the ...

Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. Signed, titled, and dated verso. 40 x 76.5 in. 41.75 x 78.25 in. (framed) Custom framed in a solid, unfinished maple floater. Provenance Watson/de Nagy & Company, Houston Private Collection, New York Sherron Francis was born in 1940, in Downers Grove, IL outside of Chicago. She originally enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, but later transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute to focus more on art. Initially, Francis' practice was focused on figurative art, with visiting professor and renowned modern realist Philip Pearlstein remarking on Francis’ draftsman acumen. In the early 1960s, art dealers and gallerists from New York would visit the Institute to entice promising artists by offering scholarships and financial aid. Because such financial arrangements were only made for men, Francis had to persuade the school's leadership to allow for women to also be eligible for merit-based aid. Her advocacy was successful, and she ultimately graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1963. She would then proceed to obtain her MFA from the University of Indiana, before assuming a teaching position at Eastern Michigan University. In 1968, with only $300 on hand, Francis moved to 16 Waverly Place in SoHo, New York. The neighborhood was a hotbed for young AbEx artists of the day, and she quickly befriended the likes of Peter Reginato, Walter Darby Bannard, Michael Steiner, Peter Young, Peter Bradley...

A mixed media work by Mary Corse. "Untitled" is a mixed media, acrylic and diamond dust on canvas in a palette of white, black, and red by American Post-war, female artist Mary Corse...

An abstract acrylic on canvas by Ed Moses. "Nambo Panel I & II" is a diptych executed in whites, creams, dark green and depicting geometric shapes with various dots, circles and corkscrews against a dark background by Post War artist Ed Moses...

An abstract acrylic and paper on canvas painting by Post War artist Arne Hiersoux. This untitled work is executed in bold strokes, splashes and drips of white, black, red and blue ag...