Bert Van Bork

Hopi Village on First Mesa, Arizona, Red, Blue, and Orange Mixed Media Landscape

circa 1996

'Second Mesa (Hopi Pueblo, Arizona)' is a watercolor, ink, and charcoal on paper by Bert Van Bork (1928-2014). Signed by the artist in the lower right co...

'Windmill on the Plains' is watercolor and ink on paper painting by Jenne Magafan. Depicting a large windmill on a 1940s Colorado farm scene with sheds and a fencing in the background. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 24 ½ x 20 ½ inches. Image size is 14 x 11 inches. Provenance: Estate of Ethel Magafan Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Jenne and Ethel Magafan were identical twins, born in Chicago to a Greek immigrant father and a Polish mother. Due to health concerns about their father, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Colorado Springs and then in Denver. He was a proud supporter of their artistic ambitions but died suddenly 1932, a heavy blow to both of them. They attended East High School in Denver, where they found a mentor in their art teacher Helen Perry. She had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago but had later abandoned a career as an artist, making her all the more determined to help the Magafan twins succeed artistically. While still in high school, the twins impressed artist Frank Mechau, and Helen Perry paid for their lessons with him. He subsequently invited them to apprentice with him at his Redstone studio. In 1936, Jenne won the Carter Memorial Art Scholarship and shared it with her sister so that they both could attend the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. Once they ran out of money, Mechau, now teaching there, hired them as assistants. Through their involvement at the Academy, the twins entered into careers as muralists, working at first with Mechau and then with Peppino Mangravite. In 1939, Jenne was awarded her first commission for a mural at the Albion, Nebraska Post Office. Eventually she won a total of seven commissions. For the work, she traveled across the country in a station wagon. Her daughter has said of her mother’s experience that, "They saved up gas coupons as fuel was rationed and drove cross country on ‘retreads’-- refurbished old tires.” Federally sponsored murals could stir up excited responses from local citizens. Jenne’s favorite mural was Cowboy Dance at the Anson, Texas post office, but the local newspaper took offense to a whiskey jug painted in the lower corner, citing that “Throughout the history of Anson there has never been an open saloon.” Meeting the artists Doris Lee and Arnold Blanch in Los Angeles, the twins learned of the art colony in Woodstock, New York, and in 1945 they went to visit. That same year, their work was exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design. Marrying her longtime love, Edward Chavez, Jenne moved to Woodstock along with her sister where, for the first time, the sisters didn’t live together. When Chavez won a Fulbright scholarship, the couple traveled to Italy. During this time, Jenne went to visit her sister in Greece, where Ethel was fulfilling her Fulbright. In 1952, the Magafans and their husbands returned to the States, and less than a week after their return Jenne died in Albany Hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage. Awards: State of Colorado Arts and Humanities Award, 1971; Received the first solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum; Honored posthumously by Historic Denver as part of the Colorado 100. Education: Cleveland Schools of Art (B.E.A.); Western Reserve University with Henry Keller; Frank Wilcox, William Joseph Eastman...

Original watercolor on paper painting by Samuel Bolton Colburn (1909-1993) of a small farm situated in a valley near the mountains. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions meas...

"Mill Near Plainfield, New Hampshire" is an original, signed watercolor painting by artist Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942), circa 1900. Singed by the artist in the lower left corner. Portrays a mill along a river with trees and clouds, painted in shades of brown, green, gray, and blue. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 13 ¾ x 12 ¼ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 7 x 5 inches. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born Massachusetts, 1858 Died 1942 Born in Franklin, Massachusetts, Charles Partridge Adams moved with his mother and two sisters to Denver, Colorado, in 1876 in an effort to cure the two girls who suffered from tuberculosis. In Denver, Adams found work at the Chain and Hardy Bookstore. He received his first, and only, art training from the owner's wife, Helen Chain. Mrs. Chain, a former pupil of George Inness, provided instruction and encouragement to the young artist and introduced him to other artists in the area including Alexander Phimister Proctor...

Colorado mountain landscape watercolor painting signed by artist Rita Derjue (1934-2020) depicts Cabins in the Snow in bright tones of blue, yellow, green and red/brown. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Presented in a custom frame with archival materials, outer dimensions measure 24 ⅛ x 31 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image sight size is 14 ½ x 21 ½ inches. About the Artist: Born Rhode Island, 1934 Artist, educator, mentor and community activist, Derjue is the daughter of European parents whose family members had previous connections with New York and New England. Her drawing talent as a youngster in Rhode Island caught the attention of family friend Johann Groen, a Dutch-born painter and photographer, who encouraged her to spend time touring and studying in Europe to further her art education. In 1956 she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design that emphasized the fundamentals of drawing and design. Her most memorable teacher was Richard Hamilton, whose work was influenced by German Expressionist Max Beckmann and the jazz greats. Her studies from nature and Cubist compositions done at that time reflect her interest in early twentieth-century European modernist painting. She had the opportunity to experience it firsthand during a year of post-graduate work at the renowned Akademie den Bildenden Kunste in Munich, Germany, in 1956-57. She studied with Ernest Geitlinger (1895-1972) whom the Nazi government classified as a “degenerate” artist in the 1930s, preventing him from exhibiting in Germany. After World War II he was one of the co-founders of the Munich artists’ association, Neue Gruppe, in 1946 and played an important role in abstract painting. While studying with him in Munich she produced a number of canvases in a referential abstract style. She also became acquainted with the Blaue Reiter group that flourished in the early twentieth century and whose expressionism strongly influenced her color palette and painting style. She particularly admired the work of Blaue Reiter co-founder and Wassily Kandinsky’s long-time partner, Gabriele Münter, whose work she studied at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and at the Gabriele Münter Haus and the Schlossmuseum in Murnau south of Munich. Derjue’s immersion in German Expressionism imparted a bold, simplified style to her work. In 1958 with a friend from Munich she went to Mexico for a year, studying with artist Frank Gonzalez in his studio in San Angel, Mexico City, and with Canadian artist, Toni Onley, in San Miguel de Allende. Onley had recently won a scholarship to the Instituto Allende to study mural and fresco painting with David Siqueiros, one of the three greats of Mexican muralism. At the Instituto Onley began painting large black-and-white canvases in an abstract impressionistic style which he imparted to Derjue, who thereafter began exploring color and space in the dimensions of her own large compositions. With writer Gregory Strong, he subsequently published Onley’s Arctic and his autobiography, The Tony Onley Story. After returning to the United States, she worked as a graphic designer for Little, Brown and Company, publishers in Boston. She began dating her future husband, Carle Zimmerman, whom she met earlier in Europe and whom she married in 1960. Joining him at Cornell University where he was completing his Ph.D degree, she earned her Master of Arts degree at the same institution and participated in group shows at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in upstate New York. In 1963 Derjue and her husband relocated to Littleton, Colorado, where he spent his entire career, first as a research engineer and later as a departmental manager for the Marathon Oil...

Colorado Modernist landscape, watercolor on paper by Turner B. Messick (1878-1952) from 1938. Tree with houses and mountains in the background, pain...

Starting with observational drawings from life, these works evolve through a series of variations, modifying tonality and forest elements.Even though recognizable as trees, the artis...

Gloria Dudfield Tractor at Work 6-10-64 Gouache and Oil Pastel on Paper 36"x32 1/2" Unframed Signed and dated lower right in crayon Very Good Condition - Minor wear consistent with ...

Soft watercolor accents add to the beauty of this cyanotype and watercolor titled "Elkhorn Slough" by Cheryl Trotter (American, 20th century), c.1980's....

VIEW OF THE BRONX Watercolor American Modern Modernism NYC 20th Century Drawing. Jan Matulka (1890 – 1972) "View of the Bronx," 15 x 20 inches. Watercolor on paper, c. 1920s. Signed lower Right. In 1907, he came to the Bronx, New York where he had a poverty-ridden childhood with a mother who tried to raise a family by herself. From 1908 to 1917, he studied at the National Academy of Design, and in 1917, received the first Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship with which he traveled and painted in the Southwest and Florida. His work from this period showed a turning towards a more abstract style, replacing his earlier realism. In 1919, he first went to Paris and then returned in 1927 on a scholarship from the National Academy. In Paris, he was exposed to Cubism, and his painting after that seemed always to carry that influence. He had his first one-man exhibit in New York City in 1925, and by 1930, he and Davis were experimenting with their version of Cubism. Concurrently for New Masses, a communist magazine, he did satiric illustrations expressing his sympathy for the working classes, and from 1929 to 1931, he taught at the Art Students League where he inspired emerging modernists such as David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, and I Rice...

Color Aid paper, Paint, Contemporary collage Hand cut color-aid paper Worked with Robert Indiana Philomena Marano has spent decades “penetrat[ing] th...

Even though recognizable as trees, the artist considers the birch works to be process-oriented abstractions. "I am interested in the interplay between the abstract markings and the s...