Skip to main content

Donn Russell Art

American, b. 1929

Donn Russell is one of Nantucket Island's most acclaimed artists. The painter/printer/sculptor was born in 1929 in Braintree, Mass. of an art-minded family. His talent for drawing and painting was recognized early and while still a teenager, he enrolled in the Boston Museum of Art School on scholarship. Subsequently, he enrolled in Pratt Institute in Brooklyn later studying at The School of Visual Arts, and finally The Art Students League, NYC. At first, Russell majored solely in painting and had early success in winning top awards at the National Academy in New York City and the Hartford Atheneum and Silvermine Arts Center in Connecticut. He became a regular member of the Waverly Gallery stable of artists on Washington Square in Greenwich Village, where he now lived.  Russell also took to displaying his watercolors on the wrought iron fences around the Square during the annual spring and fall outdoor art exhibits, winning honors and, better, cash awards. From that exposure, his work was discovered by the publishing firm of I. B. Fischer and reproduced widely. Failing eyesight and the loss of his life partner Arthur Schaefer (at 101), led Russell to close his Nantucket studio and gallery and retire permanently back to his Greenwich Village quarters in New York City in 2014. No longer able to paint or print, he returned full-time to his theater foundation directing. In 2015, he closed out 50 years of that and set up his philanthropic fund that embraced a broader range of activities to sponsor, on subjects that had interested him all his life: music (especially opera), innovative theater awards, the visual arts (especially painting and printmaking), garden creation, and, of course, as before, developmental theater in all its aspects, now including scenic design and lighting. In the fall and winter of 2015-16, he was the honoree at four major theater and dance galas and had a music performance space named for him at Mannes College of Music in Manhattan. On Nantucket Island, a new visual arts wing of the Artists Association carried his name as well.

to
1
1
1
1
1
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
6,886
3,210
2,514
1,217
1
1
1
Artist: Donn Russell
Two Dueñas.
By Donn Russell
Located in Storrs, CT
Two Dueñas. c. 1960. Watercolor and gouache. 13 x 17. Signed and annotated 'SPAIN' lower right. Housed in a 21 x 25-inch black wood frame. Donn Russell is one of Nantucket Island's...
Category

1950s American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache

Related Items
The Typographer - Original Mixed Media by Jean Marchal - Mid-20th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Thinking Man is an original painting in tempera, pen, gouache, and mixed media realized by Jean Marchal. Hand-signed on the lower left. The state of preservation of the artwork is ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Pen, Gouache, Tempera, Mixed Media

Portrait of Men - Original - Late 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of Men is an Artwork  realized by  the French Artist Gaston Charles Vuillier. Drawing-ink on paper.  The artist wants to define a well-balanced composition, through precis...
Category

Late 19th Century Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Gouache

Mid Century Self Portrait of the Original Drawing on Paper
Located in Soquel, CA
Portrait of the Artist by the Artist Original Charcoal Drawing on Paper 1960 Excellent detailed original drawing of the artist by Eugene Hawkins (American, b. 1933). A realistic dep...
Category

1960s American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Alfred Bendiner, (Baseball Hitter and Pitcher -- The Philadelphia Phillies?)
By Alfred Bendiner
Located in New York, NY
Of course it's possible that these baseball players aren't from a Philadelphia team, but I doubt it. There was so much drama and intrigue with both the Philadelphia Phillies and the ...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

India Ink, Watercolor

Portrait of a Child -Drawing by G.C. Vuillier - Late 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of a Child is an Artwork  realized by  the French Artist  Gaston Charles Vuillier. Gouache on paper. 
Category

Late 19th Century Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Gouache

Untitled image of woman smoking by modernist painter Hugó Scheiber
By Hugó Scheiber
Located in Hudson, NY
This artwork is framed with non-reflective, UV protection Museum glass. The frame size is 15.5" x 12.75" About this artist: Hugó Scheiber was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1873. His ...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Tempera, Gouache, Paper

Portrait Drawing of a Man at a Desk in India Ink on Tan Paper
Located in Soquel, CA
Portrait Drawing of a Man at a Desk in India Ink on Tan Paper Figurative drawing of a man at a desk by Jerry O'Day (American, 1912). The man is seated, about to pick up a pen. His features are somewhat exaggerated, showing foreshortening in the arms and legs. This piece is executed with confident strokes but nonetheless feels loose and playful. Signed in the bottom right corner, "Jerry O'Day." Mat size: 20"H x 16"W Paper size: 12"H x 8"W Image window size: 11.25"H x 7.25"W Jerry O'Day is also known as Geraldine Heib. Born in Oakland, California, on June 17, 1912. Geraldine Heib assumed the name Jerry O'Day at an early age. She grew up in Washington and studied in Seattle at the Cornish School of Fine Arts. Upon moving to the San Francisco Bay area in 1938, she further studied with Bufano as a muralist for two years. O'Day wed sculptor David Lemon and had a gallery in a converted cod fishery in Belvedere from 1942 until 1963. At that time, the couple moved to a houseboat in Sausalito, where she remained until her demise on March 30, 1986. Post War California artist, Jerry O'Day studied at the Cornish School of Fine Arts in Seattle; studied with Beniamino Bufano for two years. She lived in the artist's colony at the Cod fishery with artist David Lemon on Belvedere Island in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1942 - 1963. Solo Exhibitions: City of Paris, Rotunda Gallery; Lucien Labaudt Gallery, 1963; Torrance Gallery, San Anselmo, 1955; Marin Art Gallery, Sausalito, 1956; Palace of The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1962; East & West Gallery, Fillmore Street, San Francisco; Landmarks Gallery, Marin County, 1991. Selected Group Exhibitions: 65th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1945; Fourth Winter Invitational, California Palace of The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1963. Source: David J Carlson...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

India Ink, Paper

Lounge Chair Nap - Vintage Illustration in Ink and Watercolor
By Irene Pattinson
Located in Soquel, CA
Lounge Chair Nap - Vintage Illustration in Ink and Watercolor A man lazes in a lounge chair, book still in hand, as he dozes off with a content e...
Category

1950s American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

India Ink, Pen, Paper

African Mama - Vintage Illustration in Ink and Watercolor
By Irene Pattinson
Located in Soquel, CA
African Mama - Vintage Illustration in Ink and Watercolor A charming illustration, by Irene Pattinson (American, 1909-1999), shows a woman with a...
Category

1950s American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Paper, India Ink, Watercolor, Pen

Mission Impossible Original TV Guide Drawing Illustration Caricature Mid Century
By Albert Al Hirschfeld
Located in New York, NY
"Mission Impossible" Original TV Guide Drawing Illustration Caricature Mid Century NYC with Greg Morris, Barbara Bain, and Steve Hill. This original drawing...
Category

1960s American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Ink, Board

Jacques Thevenet (1891-1989) Portrait of a man in the studio, signed Gouache
By Jacques Thévenet
Located in Paris, FR
Jacques Thevenet (1891-1989) Portrait of a man in the studio Gouache on paper Signed lower right 64 x 49 cm Framed 77 x 62 cm, some damages to the frame as visible on the photographs Jacques Thévenet was born in Montquinon 17 October 1891, in the family’s ancestral home, built by his great grand-father, Auguste Hugues Claude Thévenet, lawyer from Château-Chinon. He had 3 sisters and lost his mother in 1895 when he was only four. His father Louis moved the family to Paris where he run a law practice. Young Jacques studied at the Lycée Carnot and later attended the École de droit of the Sorbonne University. Simultaneously, he attended the Académie Julian, with several painters such as Amédée de la Patellière, Jean Crotti...
Category

1960s Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Gouache

Chaim Gross Mid Century Mod Judaica Jewish Watercolor Painting Rabbis WPA Artist
By Chaim Gross
Located in Surfside, FL
Chaim Gross (American, 1904-1991) Watercolor painting Rabbinical Talmudic Discussion Hand signed 17 x 29 framed, paper 10 x 22 Chaim Gross (March 17, 1904 – May 5, 1991) was an American modernist sculptor and educator. Gross was born to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa (now known as Mezhgorye, Ukraine), in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia (which was annexed into the Ukrainian USSR in 1939 and became part of newly independent Ukraine in 1991). When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest to join their older siblings Sarah and Pinkas. Gross applied to and was accepted by the art academy in Budapest and studied under the painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1921. Gross's studies continued in the United States at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League of New York, with Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School, studying under Abbo Ostrowsky, at the same time as Moses Soyer and Peter Blume. In 1926 Gross began teaching at The Educational Alliance, and continued teaching there for the next 50 years. Louise Nevelson was among his students at the Alliance (in 1934), during the time she was transitioning from painting to sculpture. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he exhibited at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries and, beginning in 1928, at the Whitney Studio Club. In 1929, Gross experimented with printmaking, and created an important group of 15 linocuts and lithographs of landscapes, New York City streets and parks, women in interiors, the circus, and vaudeville. The entire suite is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gross returned to the medium of printmaking in the 1960s, and produced approximately 200 works in the medium over the next two decades. For more than sixty years Chaim Gross's art has expressed optimistic, affirming themes, Judaica, balancing acrobats, cyclists, trapeze artists and mothers and children convey joyfulness, modernism, exuberance, love, and intimacy. This aspect of his work remained consistent with his Jewish Hasidic heritage, which teaches that only in his childlike happiness is man nearest to God. In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friends Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others. Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick. In 1933 Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, Israeli President, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking, Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in 1953. He also did some important Hebrew medals. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade Gross was working primarily in bronze which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronze The Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of Mayor Ed Koch, and installed at the Bleecker Street Park at 11th street, is now a fixture of Greenwich Village. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum in the show The Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross. Gross was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with Jacob Lawrence and Lukas Foss. In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings. In 1994, Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work.In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friends Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others. Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick. In 1933 Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking, Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in 1953. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade Gross was working primarily in bronze which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronze The Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of Mayor Ed Koch, and installed at the Bleecker Street Park at 11th street, is now a fixture of Greenwich Village. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum in the show The Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross. Gross was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with Jacob Lawrence and Lukas Foss. In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings. In 1994, Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work. Gross was a professor of printmaking and sculpture at both the Educational Alliance and the New School for Social Research in New York City, as well as at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the MoMA art school, the Art Student's League and the New Art School (which Gross ran briefly with Alexander Dobkin...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Donn Russell Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Donn Russell art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Donn Russell art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Donn Russell in gouache, paint, watercolor and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1950s and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Donn Russell art, so small editions measuring 25 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Irene Pattinson, Alfred Bendiner, and Frank Kleinholz. Donn Russell art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $625 and tops out at $625, while the average work can sell for $625.

Recently Viewed

View All