Elie Nadelman

Profile of a Woman

1921

Silverpoint and colored pencil on paper, 29 x 23 in. Signed (at lower right): Joseph Stella Executed about 1919 EXHIBITED: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, November 23, 1985–January 4, 1986, American Masterworks on Paper: Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints, pp. 6, 46 no. 47 illus. // (probably) Richard York Gallery, New York, October 5–November 17, 1990, Joseph Stella: 100 Works on Paper, no. 36 EX COLL.: [Dudensing Galleries, New York]; sale, Christie’s, New York, December 7, 1984, lot 324; [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1984]; to private collection, 2006 until the present An independent-minded artist who adhered to the credo “Rules don’t exist,” Joseph Stella explored a range of styles, media, and themes, willfully ignoring the “barricades erected by ... [the] self-appointed dictators” of the art establishment (Joseph Stella, “On Painting,” Broom 11 [December 1921], pp. 122–23; Joseph Stella, “Discovery of America: Autobiographical Notes,” Art News 59 [November 1960], p. 41). By doing so, he produced a diverse and highly eclectic body of work, ranging from realist figure subjects, pulsating Futurist cityscapes, and modernist religious...

Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Locano, a small town in the southern Appenines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals. Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp. Stella was nineteen when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133). Two Wood Ducks...

Charles Houghton Howard was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the third of five children in a cultured and educated family with roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. His fat...

Cleveland-born painter, advertising artist, and industrial designer Lawrence Blazey received his professional training at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute). I...

Charles Houghton Howard was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the third of five children in a cultured and educated family with roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. His fat...

Signed (at lower right): Louisa Chase 1989

Pencil, coloured pencil and chalk on paper, titled (lower left), signed (lower right), 31cm x 46cm, (51cm x 68cm framed). John Koch was an American painter and teacher, and an impo...

Joseph Stella (1877-1946, American, Italian) "Flower Study". Crayon and pencil on paper. Signed lower left. Image 6 7/8” x 4 /34”. Framed 12 1/2” x 10”. Gallery label Beadleston Gallery N.Y. N.Y. Joseph Stella (American, June 13, 1877–November 5, 1946) was a Futurist painter known for his association with the American Precisionism movement and his works depicting industrial America. Stella was born in Lucano, Italy. In 1896, he relocated to New York, NY, to study medicine. After becoming interested in art, Stella left his medical studies and began to study art at the Art Students League of New York. While there, he studied under William Merritt Chase. During this time, Stella's early works featured a Rembrandt style...

Estate stamp lower right: C-139

BYE BYE BIRDIE Original 1960 Broadway Musical Costume Drawing Tony Award Elvis. Miles White (1915 – 2000) BYE BYE BIRDIE 11 x 8 inches Mixed Media on...

BYE BYE BIRDIE Original 1960 Broadway Musical Costume Drawing Tony Award Elvis Miles White (1915 – 2000) BYE BYE BIRDIE 11 x 8 inches Mixed Media on Paper Signed Lower Right Framed by Bark Affixed to the back are original gold lame fabric swatches. This drawing is available, along with two other original costume drawings from BIRDIE by Miles White, another of Conrad Birdie and one of Chita Rivera. Miles White, a leading Broadway and Hollywood costume designer for decades. created costumes for the original Broadway productions of OKLAHOMA CAROUSEL, BYE BYE BIRDIE and many others. In film he worked on "Around the World in 80 Days" and "The Greatest Show on Earth." He designed Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and the Ice Capades for many years. Miles was a close friend for the last 20 years of his life. We live with one of his two Tony Awards and a dozen drawings. BYE BYE BIRDIE is a stage musical with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, based upon a book by Michael Stewart...

Chita Rivera BYE BYE BIRDIE Original 1960 Broadway Costume Drawing Tony Awards Miles White (1915 – 2000) ChITA RIVERA in BYE BYE BIRDIE 11 x 8 inches M...