Charles William Smith

Abstraction

c. 1939

11 color screen print Signed, dated, titled and numberedin pencil Edition: 150 (9/150) Provenance: Estate of the Artist By Decent

Signed and dated "1962" by the artist lower right. Mixed media on heavy paper. Done for a show to fund a trip to Italy.

Untitled (Abstraction) Ink on textured paper, c. 1958 Signed lower right "Scarlett" (see photo) Condition: Excellent Archival framing with OP3 Acrylic Sheet size: 21 3/4 x 30 inches Frame size: 28 1/2 x 36 1/2 inches Note: A rare mid to late 1950s example of the artist's abstract expressionist style. Provenance: estate of the artist Private Collection, Hudson River Valley, New York Rolph Scarlett B. 1889, GUELPH, ONTARIO; D. 1984, WOODSTOCK, NEW YORK Born on June 13, 1889 in Guelph, Canada, and into an artistic family, Rolph Scarlett spent his teenage years as an apprentice in his uncle’s jewelry firm and briefly studied at the Art Students League, New York. While working in the jewelry industry, Scarlett found time to paint and design theatrical sets in his free time, including one for the 1928 world premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s drama Lazarus Laughed (1926). In 1923, while on a business trip to Switzerland, Scarlett had met the artist Paul Klee and soon after abandoned his figurative painting style in favor of an abstract language that suggested more universal, cosmic truths. In 1937, after permanently settling in New York, Scarlett became acquainted with the artist and curator Hilla Rebay, the first director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952). Rebay provided Scarlett with a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship to paint full-time and obtained several of his paintings for the museum’s collection. From 1940 to 1946, Scarlett served as the museum’s chief lecturer, giving Sunday afternoon talks on art. Through Rebay, Scarlett became acquainted with the nonobjective works of Rudolf Bauer and Vasily Kandinsky and further refined his abstract style. Works from this era such as Yellow Bar (1942) are defined by overlapping geometric planes of bright, primary colors set against mute backgrounds. Scarlett avoided any reference to the outside world and believed that nonobjective painting was an act, in his words, of “pure creation.” During his lifetime, solo shows of his work were held at the Jacques Seligmann Gallery, New York (1949); Sioux City Art Center, Iowa (1951); and Washburn Gallery...

Untitled Pastel on paper, 1922 Signed with the artist's initials in pencil Provenance: Estate of the artist Francis M. Nauman (label) Private collection, NY A very early abstract/cubist work by Kelly. Created while the artist was studying with Arthur Carles in Philadelphia. Leon Kelly (October 21, 1901 – June 28, 1982) was an American artist born in Philadelphia, PA. He is most well known for his contributions to American Surrealism, but his work also encompassed styles such as Cubism, Social Realism, and Abstraction. Reclusive by nature, a character trait that became more exaggerated in the 1940s and later, Kelly's work reflects his determination not to be limited by the trends of his time. His large output of paintings is complemented by a prolific number of drawings that span his career of 50 years. Some of the collections where his work is represented are: The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Boston Public Library. Biography Kelly was born in 1901 at home at 1533 Newkirk Street, Philadelphia, PA. He was the only child of Elizabeth (née Stevenson) and Pantaleon L. Kelly. The family resided in Philadelphia where Pantaleon and two of his cousins owned Kelly Brothers, a successful tailoring business. The prosperity of the firm enabled his father to purchase a 144-acre farm in Bucks County PA in 1902, which he named "Rural Retreat" It was here that Pantaleon took Leon to spend every weekend away from the pressures of business and from the disappointments in his failing marriage. Idyllic and peaceful memories of the farm stayed with Leon and embued his work with a love of nature that emerged later in the Lunar Series, in Return and Departure, and in the insect imagery of his Surrealist work. "If anything," he once said,"I am a Pantheist and see a spirit in everything, the grass, the rocks, everything." At thirteen, Leon left school and began private painting lessons with Albert Jean Adolphe, a teacher at the School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) in Philadelphia. He learned technique by copying the works of the old masters and visiting the Philadelphia Zoo, where he would draw animals. Drawings done in 1916 and 1917 of elephants, snakes and antelope, as well as copies of old master paintings by Holbein and Michelangelo, heralded an impressive emerging talent. In 1917, he studied sculpture with Alexander Portnoff but his studies came to an abrupt halt with the start of World War I. Being too young to enlist, he joined the Quartermaster Corp at the Army Depot in Philadelphia, where he served for more than a year loading ships with supplies and, along with other artists, working on drawings for camouflage. By 1920, the family's fortunes drastically changed. His father's business had failed due to the introduction of ready made clothing and his marriage, unhappy from the beginning, dissolved. Broken by circumstance Pantaleon left Philadelphia to begin a wandering existence looking for work leaving Leon to support his mother and grandmother. He found a job in 1920 at the Freihofer Baking Company where he worked nights for the next four years. Under these circumstances Leon continued to develop his skills in drawing and painting and learned of the revolutionary developments in art that were taking place in Paris. During the day he was granted permission to study anatomy at the Philadelphia School of Osteopathy where he dissected a cadaver and perfected his knowledge of the human figure. He also met and studied etching with Earl Horter, a well known illustrator, who had amassed a significant collection of modern art which included work by Brancusi, Matisse, and Cubist works by Picasso and Braque. Among the artists around Horter was Arthur Carles, a charismatic and controversial painter who taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Leon enrolled in the Academy in 1922, becoming what Carles described as, "his best student". In the next three years Leon work ranged from academic studies of plaster casts, to pointillism, to landscapes of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, as well as a series of pastels showing influences from Matisse to Picasso. Clearly influenced by Earl Horter's collection and Arthur Carles he mastered analytical cubism in works such as The Three Pears, 1923 and 1925 experimented with Purism in Moon Behind the Italian House. In 1925 Kelly was awarded a Cresson Scholarship and on June 14 he left for Europe. Paris The first trip to Europe lasted for approximately three and a half months and introduced Kelly to a culture and place where he felt he belonged. Though he returned to the Academy in the Fall, he left for Europe again a few months later to begin a four-year stay in Paris. He moved into an apartment at 19 rue Daguerre in Paris and began an existence intellectually rich but in creature comforts, very poor. "I kept a cinderblock over the drain in the kitchen sink to keep the rats out of the apartment" he once explained. He frequented the cafes making acquaintances with Henry Miller, James Joyce and the critic Félix Fénéon as well as others. His days were split between copying old master paintings in the Louvre and pursuing modernist ideas that were swirling through the work of all the artists around him. The Lake, 1926 and Interior of the Studio, 1927, now in the Newark Museum. Patrons during this time were the police official Leon Zamaran, a collector of Courbets, Lautrecs and others, who began collecting Kelly's work. Another was Alfred Barnes of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. In 1929 Kelly married a young French woman, Henriette D'Erfurth. She appears frequently in paintings and drawings done between 1928 and the early 1930s. Philadelphia The stock market crash of 1929 made it impossible to continue living in Paris and Kelly and Henriette returned to Philadelphia in 1930. He rented a studio on Thompson Street and began working and participating in shows in the city's galleries. Work from 1930 to 1940 showed continuing influences and experimentation with the themes and techniques acquired in Paris as well as a brief foray into Social Realism. The Little Gallery of Contemporary Art purchased the Absinthe Drinker...

Surrealist landscape with organic shapes Watercolor on paper, 1960-1970 Signed CE Harris lower right corner (see photo) Stamped with the artist’s estate stamp verso (see photo) Reference: Beni Kosh Collection Estate Stamp #705 Provenance: Estate of the artist A wonderful example by one of the few African American Surrealist painters. “An African-American born Charles E. Harris, the name under which he painted until the early 1960s when he took the name of Kosh. His paintings span the period 1949-71, and reflect abstract and surreal figurative subjects which include Cleveland street scenes, jazz clubs, and depictions of Christ.” Courtesy of Rachel Davis Fine Art “Beni E. Kosh was born as Charles Elmer Harris, in Cleveland Ohio. He changed his name in the 1960’s, which translates to “Son of Ethiopia”. He rarely exhibited or sold his work and was affiliated with the African-American artists’ “Sho-nuff Art Group” and the Karamu House and studied under Cleveland artist Paul Travis. His style is very diverse and he experimented with Cubism, portraiture and abstractions in series. His paintings span from 1949 – 1971, and reflect abstract and surreal figurative subjects, which include Cleveland street scenes, jazz clubs, and depictions of Christ. He received little recognition during his lifetime and was only “rediscovered” literally days after his death when hundreds of his paintings were rescued by an art dealer.” (Courtesy Pennsylvania Art...

Untitled Watercolor on paper, 1990 Signed lower left corner Provenance: Gift of the Artist to one of hr patrons Distinguished Midwest Private Collection Conditi...

Lithograph with hand-additions in blue crayon and watercolor, with extensive dedication in pencil, signed lower right, a unique HC (hors-commerce/not for sale) impression outside of ...

I See Future 2, 2020. Smoke, coffee, ballpoint pen and pastel on ivory Rosaspina fabriano paper In the 'I see...' series, Actofel Ilovu’s latest body of prints, the artist draws on ...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Lake Tahoe Panorama" shows a sequence of abstracted ripples of the calm Tahoe waters. Details: + Title: Lake Tahoe Panor...

An abstracted composition containing a kneeling figure . this is a stamped print, woodcblock most likely artfully combined with moody watercolor. Stefan Alexander, born Czechoslovak...

This is original watercolor over a limited edition woodcut political poster. hand signed, dated and numbered. it bears similarity to works by Alexander Calder. Employing a star and abstract design. Katherine Porter is an American artist born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1941. She received her BA from Colorado College in 1963. Katherine Porter received an honorary doctorate from Colby College. She has shown twice in the Whitney Biennial and solo exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery in London, the Nina Nielsen Gallery in Boston, and the Andre Emmerich and Salander-O'Reilly Galleries in New York. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Tel Aviv Museum and Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem. (Katherine Page Porter, Katherine Pavlis Porter) Her exhibitions include biennials in 1976 and 1981 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; 1980 at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts; 1981, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; 1985, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; and 1987 at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York City. Classic Americana. American Abstract Expressionism. Early Pattern and Decoration piece, The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The P&D movement wanted to revive an interest in minor forms such as patterning which at that point was equated with triviality. The prevailing negative view of decoration was one not generally shared by non-Western cultures, The Pattern and Decoration movement was influenced by sources outside of what was considered to be fine art. Blurring the line between art and design, many P&D works mimic patterns like those on wallpapers, printed fabrics, and quilts. There is a close connection between the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Feminist art movement. The P&D movement arose in opposition to the Minimalist and Conceptualist movements. Mary Grigoriadis Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Zakanitch all worked in this same vein. SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna, Austria Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, CA Salander O’Reilly Gallery, New York, NY Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY Knoedler Gallery, London Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY Pace Gallery, Addison, ME Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (drawings) Harcus Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Contemporary Landscape Painting, Nagoya/Boston Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan From the Collection of Edward Broida, Palm Beach Art Museum, Palm Beach, FL Abstraction Per Se (through January 1993), Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NY Painting Self-Evident (Curator), Picolo Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC Art on Paper 1990, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina, Museo Barjola, Gijon, Spain; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NY Sightings, Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos, Barcelona; Casa Revilla, Valladolid, Invitational, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT Atelier Project, Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, NY Landscape Show, Allan Frumkin Gallery, NY Rethinking the Avant-Garde, by Jonathan Fineberg, The Katonah Gallery, NY Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NY Group Show, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland Contemporary Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, NY Modern Expressionist: German, Italian, & American Painters, Sidney Janis Gallery, NY American Women Artists, Part II: Younger Generation, Sidney Janis Gallery, NY Contemporary Works on Paper, Frumkin-Adams Gallery, NY Hassam Speicher Purchase Fund Exhibition, American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY The End of the World: Contemporary Visions of the Apocalypse, The New York Museum of Contemporary Art, NY Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Homage to Arthur Dove, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY Six Painters, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY Twenty New York Painters, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA 74th American Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Abstract Painting, Women’s Caucus, NY Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Spoleto Choice, Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC From Women’s Eyes, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Theodoran, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Three If By Air, Obelisk Gallery, Boston, MA Betty Parsons Collection, Finch College, New York, NY SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria California Palace of the Legion of Honor (Achenbach Foundation), San Francisco, CA Detroit Art Institute, Detroit, MI Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Gemeentsmuseum of the Hague, The Hague, Netherlands (permanent installation) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Houston Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Mount Holyoke...

Digital creation, printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag de 308 gr - Unframed. Fluctuating between illustration and expressionism, connecting the geometric and biomorphic worlds, Perea co...