Sam Provenzano

'San Francisco', Mid-century California Modernist, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum

Circa 1955

Signed lower right, 'Richard Soderman N.W.S', (American, 20th century), titled 'China Cove' and dated 1972. Richard Soderman began drawing at the age...

Signed lower right, 'Gilberg' for Robert George Gilberg (American, 1911-1970) and painted circa 1965. Born in Oakland, Robert George Gilberg first studied at the Oakland Art Center during the 1930s. Following service during WWII, he settled in Nevada City, California where he lived and painted until shortly before his death in San Francisco. Gilberg exhibited widely and with success and was the recipient of numerous medals, prizes and juried awards, including at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts...

Signed lower right, "Robert Landry" (American, 1921-1999) and painted circa 1965. Watercolor seascape showing a view of a rocky inlet with sailboats on the ocean. Robert Landry attended high school on the East Coast then went into the service during World War II. After the war, he studied art in Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis on the G.I. Bill. This led to work as a commercial illustrator for the United States Air Force Graphic Arts Division at the Pentagon, and as an art director for the Federal Aviation Agency and Convair Astronautics. After the late 1940s, he began a serious painting career and started exhibiting fine art watercolors...

Signed lower left, "Wesley Wright", and painted circa 1960. A substantial, mid-century watercolor view of an industrial area with grain containers and smokestacks.

Signed lower right, "Johnston" and dated 1981. Bearing exhibition label from 17th Pacific Grove Annual Watercolor Competition. A vibrant Modernist watercolor brimming with color and compressed energy. Born in California on May 26, 1907, Lucille Johnston settled in Glendale in the 1930's. She exhibited widely including at the California Watercolor...

Watercolor landscape showing a view of a lake with grasses and trees growing at its edge and reflected in the water, with cloudy skies overhead. Signed lower left, "Marge Stevens" a...

John Whorf captures one of the thrilling moments of fishing in this watercolor – when the fish is on the line, but still trying to escape. One of the fastest fish in the world, marlin fishing...

Magazine Cover Illustration Mid 20th Century Modern Theatre Broadway Realism WPA Ernest Hamlin Baker (1889 – 1975) “Today Magazine” Cover ...

"Times Square" Mid 20th Century 1937 Modernism Broadway Drawing NYC Cityscape Philip Goodwin (20th Century) "Times Square," 23 ½ x 17 ¼ inches. Gouache...

NYC Watercolor Drawing American Modern 20th Century Modernism Mid-Century WPA. David Fredenthal (1914-1958) "View of New York from New Jersey,"7 x 10 inches. Watercolor on Paper, c. 1948. Signed lower right. David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road...

Reginald Marsh "Brooklyn Bridge" NYC Modernism WPA Mid-Century Watercolor Modern Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954) Brooklyn Bridge, 1940, Signed and dated Reginald Marsh May 1940 (lr), Watercolor over traces of pencil on paper , 15 x 22 inches sight. Reginald Marsh was born in Paris, France in 1898, the child of artist parents. He was born over a small cafe on Paris' Left Bank. He was brought to the United States in 1900 and was drawing before he was three. He studied art at Yale University and the Art Students League, during which time he worked primarily as an illustrator for New York newspapers and magazines. After studying in Paris in 1925 and 1926, he turned seriously to painting. In 1929 he was introduced to the egg-tempera medium, which he used extensively the rest of his life. Marsh's gusto for painting the bottom crust of society contrasted curiously with his background. His parents, both well-known artists, were steeped in academic traditions. He attended Lawrenceville Academy and Yale; perhaps this elite background made it possible to paint the earthy people he did with a journalist's objectivity. An admirer of Rubens and Delacroix, he disliked modernist art; indeed, his lifelong preoccupation was with people - enjoying themselves at beaches, at amusement parks, or on crowded city streets. Marsh was a second-generation Ash Can School painter and printmaker, best known as an urban regionalist. He spent his days sketching in small notebooks...

"Bathers" American Scene Social Realism 20th Century Modernism Ashcan Fauvism Charles Demuth (1883-1935) "Bathers" 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches watercolor on paper, c. 1930 Signed lower le...