Claude Levy

Claude-Levy Cast Iron Sculpture of Flora, Dated 1925

1925

White stone head in the art deco style. Born in Lithuania at the end of the nineteenth century, Boris Lovet-Lorski studied art at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg before working briefly as an architect. He immigrated to New York in 1920 and became an American citizen five years later. His sculptures epitomize the ideals of the Art Deco decades: comprised of sleek lines and smooth surfaces, the streamlined compositions reflect the new technological forms of the machine age. Despite their modernist treatment, Lovet-Lorski’s elegant, stylized figures reference both ancient and classical sources and are characterized by a universal and serene sensibility. Concentrating on figural busts, familial groups, and standing female nudes as his subject matter, the artist rendered them in a variety of media. The materials range from the traditional bronze and marble to exotic woods and unusual stones; each is carefully selected so that its surface texture and color contribute to the emotive aura of the work. Carved out of a block of limestone, Untitled (Head) depicts a female visage nearly androgynous in its idealization. The delicate features of her face, the long, straight nose, thin pursed lips and high cheekbones, are made even more diminutive by the massive bulk of the stone that serves as their backdrop. The prominent widow’s peak of her hairline and the strong arch of her brow, two of Lovet-Lorski’s most distinctive characteristics, are elongated to accentuate the linear rhythms of the composition. The layers of her hair are delineated by stepped striations reminiscent of archaic precedents, which meld into structural columns and connect the form architecturally to the stone’s mass. Unlike the majority of Lovet-Lorski’s sculptures, in which the heads of the figures are tilted to the side or downward to convey a pensive mood, the woman in Untitled (Head) looks straight ahead. Her frontal positioning gives the composition a nearly perfect symmetry, in turn endowing the work with a still, eternal sensibility. The notched surface of the surrounding limestone stands in sharp contrast to the smoothness of her skin. In the twenties, the artist tended to finish his sculptures to a highly polished degree of refinement, but in the thirties he began to experiment with contrasts of texture and the aesthetic of the fragment. In this respect, the work is vaguely evocative of Egyptian funerary sculptures, in which the figures were carved with an eye for three-dimensionality but were left intact in a larger piece of stone to give them physical durability and permanence. Embodying classical ideals of stoicism and universal beauty, the sculpture ultimately exudes a surface allure that is difficult to resist. A similar example of this approach can be seen in the 1937 sculpture Diana, which resides in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Carved from a piece of black Belgian marble, the work is a stylized bust of the Greek goddess Diana...

William Glackens, 1870-1938 Criticizing Ernest Lawson’s Art Class, ca. 1907 Watercolor and pencil on paper Signed (at lower left): Glackens Inscribed ...

William Glackens, 1870-1938 M. Durand... Arrived on the Scene, 1903 Ink, wash, charcoal and Chinese white on paper Signed (at lower left): W. Glackens...

Irving Ramsay Wiles, 1861-1948 A Fashionable Young Lady Oil on canvas 28 1/8 x 22 5/8 inches Signed lower right: Irving R Wiles Illustrator, teacher, and painter Irving Ramsey Wiles was adept at portraits, figural works, and landscapes characterized by the informal elegance of cosmopolitan American art at the turn of the twentieth century. Wiles received his earliest art instruction from his father, landscape painter and teacher Lemuel M. Wiles (1826–1905), and at the age of eighteen, in 1879, exhibited his first painting at New York’s prestigious National Academy of Design. After one year’s study at the Art Students League in New York, under the influential painter-teachers William Merritt Chase and J. Carroll Beckwith, Wiles went to Paris for further study. He enrolled in the Académie Julian, a popular school among American artists, and then worked in the studio of French academic painter Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (1837–1917). During his student years Wiles painted watercolor street scenes of Paris, and he also traveled in Italy and in the French countryside. Wiles returned to New York in 1884 and exhibited two of his sketches. These attracted the notice of the art editor of the popular Century Magazine, who asked the young artist to make illustrations for the journal. Wiles’s illustrations appeared in other publications as well, and he also supported himself by teaching at his studio and at his father’s summer art school in upstate New York. Wiles was elected a member of the progressive Society of American Artists and, after one of his works won a prize there, to the National Academy of Design as an associate member; full membership followed in 1897. By that date, Wiles was able to devote himself more fully to portraits and figural compositions in oils, paintings that mark the influence of his teacher Chase, who remained a lifelong friend. Like his mentor, Wiles also worked in watercolor and pastel and belonged to several organizations devoted to those media, which enjoyed revivals in late-nineteenth-century America. He exhibited his work widely and won numerous awards throughout his career. In the late 1890s, Wiles and his father moved their summer classes to Peconic, on the North Fork of New York’s Long Island...

Charles Burchfield 1893-1967 Trilliums and Rock Ledge, 1919 Gouache and watercolor on paper Provenance: The artist until at least 1963 Private collection, New York Private Collectio...

Charles Burchfield, 1893-1967 Wallpaper Design No.2, 1922-28 Watercolor and gouache on paper

Houben R.T is an Avant-garde painter and draftsman with his own unmistakable voice. Houben was born in Bulgaria and graduated with a degree in painting from the Conservative Art Acad...

Houben R.T is an Avant-garde painter and draftsman with his own unmistakable voice. Houben was born in Bulgaria and graduated with a degree in painting from the Conservative Art Acad...

Concrete Head Unique Figurative Abstract Geometric Figure Grey Contemporary In Stock Concrete head is a figurative, abstract, geometric, figure, grey po...

modern-surreal sculpture, with a wooden base covered in gold leaf. The presence of this observer of the universe transmits peace and fantasy.

Inspired by various facets of his own life story, Salvadoran-American artist J Oscar Molina creates work that seamlessly bridges cultures, industries, a...

Inspired by various facets of his own life story, Salvadoran-American artist J Oscar Molina creates work that seamlessly bridges cultures, industries, and feelings. With a commitment...