Sushe Felix

'Garden of the Gods' - Colorado Springs, Colorado Landscape, Pastel Drawing

1987

Pastel on paper drawing by Sushe Felix (20th Century) portraying an American Modernist view of Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs. Presented in a custom frame with all archi...

Oil stick on paper titled "Barn Side with Sliding Doors" by George Vander Sluis (1915-1984) of a grey wooden barn with two windows as well as two r...

Colorado mountain landscape watercolor painting signed by artist Rita Derjue (1934-2020) depicts Cabins in the Snow in bright tones of blue, yellow, green and red/brown. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Presented in a custom frame with archival materials, outer dimensions measure 24 ⅛ x 31 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image sight size is 14 ½ x 21 ½ inches. About the Artist: Born Rhode Island, 1934 Artist, educator, mentor and community activist, Derjue is the daughter of European parents whose family members had previous connections with New York and New England. Her drawing talent as a youngster in Rhode Island caught the attention of family friend Johann Groen, a Dutch-born painter and photographer, who encouraged her to spend time touring and studying in Europe to further her art education. In 1956 she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design that emphasized the fundamentals of drawing and design. Her most memorable teacher was Richard Hamilton, whose work was influenced by German Expressionist Max Beckmann and the jazz greats. Her studies from nature and Cubist compositions done at that time reflect her interest in early twentieth-century European modernist painting. She had the opportunity to experience it firsthand during a year of post-graduate work at the renowned Akademie den Bildenden Kunste in Munich, Germany, in 1956-57. She studied with Ernest Geitlinger (1895-1972) whom the Nazi government classified as a “degenerate” artist in the 1930s, preventing him from exhibiting in Germany. After World War II he was one of the co-founders of the Munich artists’ association, Neue Gruppe, in 1946 and played an important role in abstract painting. While studying with him in Munich she produced a number of canvases in a referential abstract style. She also became acquainted with the Blaue Reiter group that flourished in the early twentieth century and whose expressionism strongly influenced her color palette and painting style. She particularly admired the work of Blaue Reiter co-founder and Wassily Kandinsky’s long-time partner, Gabriele Münter, whose work she studied at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and at the Gabriele Münter Haus and the Schlossmuseum in Murnau south of Munich. Derjue’s immersion in German Expressionism imparted a bold, simplified style to her work. In 1958 with a friend from Munich she went to Mexico for a year, studying with artist Frank Gonzalez in his studio in San Angel, Mexico City, and with Canadian artist, Toni Onley, in San Miguel de Allende. Onley had recently won a scholarship to the Instituto Allende to study mural and fresco painting with David Siqueiros, one of the three greats of Mexican muralism. At the Instituto Onley began painting large black-and-white canvases in an abstract impressionistic style which he imparted to Derjue, who thereafter began exploring color and space in the dimensions of her own large compositions. With writer Gregory Strong, he subsequently published Onley’s Arctic and his autobiography, The Tony Onley Story. After returning to the United States, she worked as a graphic designer for Little, Brown and Company, publishers in Boston. She began dating her future husband, Carle Zimmerman, whom she met earlier in Europe and whom she married in 1960. Joining him at Cornell University where he was completing his Ph.D degree, she earned her Master of Arts degree at the same institution and participated in group shows at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in upstate New York. In 1963 Derjue and her husband relocated to Littleton, Colorado, where he spent his entire career, first as a research engineer and later as a departmental manager for the Marathon Oil...

Georgetown, Colorado, vintage 1938 WPA era ink drawing/painting on paper of a church set in a rocky mountain landscape by Charles Bunnell (1897-1968). Black on a creamy white paper, signed and dated lower right, titled lower left. Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 16 ¼ x 14 ½ x 1¼ inches. Image size is 7 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches. Drawing is clean and in good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of Charles Ragland Bunnell Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Charles Bunnell developed a love for art as a child in Kansas City, Missouri. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer...

'Second Mesa (Hopi Pueblo, Arizona)' is a watercolor, ink, and charcoal on paper by Bert Van Bork (1928-2014). Signed by the artist in the lower right co...

"Mill Near Plainfield, New Hampshire" is an original, signed watercolor painting by artist Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942), circa 1900. Singed by the artist in the lower left corner. Portrays a mill along a river with trees and clouds, painted in shades of brown, green, gray, and blue. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 13 ¾ x 12 ¼ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 7 x 5 inches. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born Massachusetts, 1858 Died 1942 Born in Franklin, Massachusetts, Charles Partridge Adams moved with his mother and two sisters to Denver, Colorado, in 1876 in an effort to cure the two girls who suffered from tuberculosis. In Denver, Adams found work at the Chain and Hardy Bookstore. He received his first, and only, art training from the owner's wife, Helen Chain. Mrs. Chain, a former pupil of George Inness, provided instruction and encouragement to the young artist and introduced him to other artists in the area including Alexander Phimister Proctor...

Leon Dolice (1892 - 1960) New York Harbor Skyline at Twilight (Searching), circa 1930-40 Pastel on paper 12 x 19 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Spanierman Gallery, New York T...

Francesco Spicuzza (American, 1883-1962) Untitled Landscape, 20th century Pastel on paper Sight size: 24 x 30 in. Framed: 26 1/4 x 32 3/8 in. Signed lower right: Spicuzza Italian-born Francesco Spicuzza was primarily a Wisconsin painter who did portraits, still-lives and local landscapes. He spent the first part of his life in near-poverty to become a painter. An eternal optimist, in 1917, the artist reported: "I am happy and my only ambition now is to paint better and better until I shall have reached the measure of the best of which I am capable." (Spicuzza, 1917, p. 22). His predilection for beach scenes germinated early: reportedly, the five-year-old boy first drew the outlines of his father's fishing boat in the sand on the seashore near their home in Sicily. After setting himself up as a fruit peddler in Milwaukee, Spicuzza's father sent for his family when Francesco was eight years old. For the following six years the boy was unable to attend school because of his job in his father's fruit and vegetable business. The poor lad suffered a caved-in shoulder from carrying a heavy wooden crate. The young Spicuzza was aided by moral and financial support from a sympathetic Milwaukee businessman named John Cramer, publisher and editor of the Evening Wisconsin, who raised Spicuzza's salary as a newspaper assembler so that he could attend school. In 1899 or 1900, Spicuzza began studying drawing and anatomy under Robert Schade (1861-1912), a painter of panoramas who had been trained in Munich under Carl Theodor von Piloty. Spicuzza was also taught by Alexander Mueller (1872-1935), a product of the Weimar and Munich academies. Mueller realized Spicuzza was a colorist and encouraged that orientation (Madle, 1961). Spicuzza found it beneficial to accept an apprenticeship in a lithographic studio for $8 a week, which demanded most of his time. During the St. Louis Universal Exposition in 1904, still a struggling student, Spicuzza attended the fair, thanks to Cramer. It was not long before Spicuzza received a twenty-five dollar portrait commission, and this inaugural success led to new commissions and allowed him to continue as a painter. The earliest influences in his work appear to be from Edward H. Potthast and Maurice Prendergast, though Spicuzza never mentioned either artist. Already in August 1910, Spicuzza was described in a newspaper as "one of the most talented of Milwaukee's rising workers." He undoubtedly received lasting inspiration from his one summer study period in 1911 with John F. Carlson at the Art Students League's Summer School in Woodstock, New York. Certainly Spicuzza would have picked up spontaneity in handling the brush from Carlson. Although he executed numerous still-lives and an occasional religious work, Spicuzza is best known for his Milwaukee beach scenes populated with frolicking bathers in multi-colored attire, not unlike the images of Potthast, who used a similar technique. Many of these are small, preparatory works on canvas board executed between 1910 and 1915. Frequently with even greater animation than Potthast, Spicuzza produced moving images of youthful energy and uninhibited child's play. These beach genre scenes reflect the attitude of American impressionists who depicted the more pleasant side of life. Spicuzza manipulated a successful balance of rich pigment applied in varying degrees of impasto texture with subtle nuances of hue. Working all'aperto, he sought "the soft enticing shades of yellow, blue, green, pink and lavender . . . to get the effects of bright glistening summer air." (L.E.S., n.d.). As a painter whose color not only derived from direct observation but also from a personal theory of color symbolism, Spicuzza traded the linear approach of lithography for dynamic patches of brilliant color. Like Prendergast, he would often tilt the angle of the picture plane to bring the viewer's position above the scene. Spicuzza was unable to enter the 1913 Armory Show or the Panama-Pacific International Exposition two years later but he did submit work to the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and those of the Art Institute of Chicago. His first important award was the bronze medal presented by the St. Paul Institute in 1913, which was followed by the silver medal two years later. Before long, Spicuzza had acquired a greater sense of security in his profession and was described by a writer in International Studio (April 1917) as "an independent artist with an assured future. His pastels and water-colours are poetic and joyous bits of nature with a genuine out-of-door feeling." In 1918, his Spirit of Youth, exhibited at the National Academy of Design, sold for $112.50. Four years later, the artist achieved his greatest local recognition by winning the gold medal from the Milwaukee Art Institute. Spicuzza spent a great deal of time painting en plein air and by 1925 he began summering at Big Cedar Lake, near West Bend, Wisconsin to gather his subject matter. Easter Morning (1926) owes something to the Symbolist movement, with its figure of Christ appearing over a seascape. During the difficult era of the Depression, patrons came to Spicuzza's aid and during the 40s, he taught housewives, businessmen and students at the Milwaukee Art Institute, the Milwaukee Art Center, and in his private studio. In the following decade, although his kind of art was no longer popular in the "make-it-or-break-it" New York gallery world, Spicuzza enjoyed regular patronage and sales. His beach scenes became more static and he would experiment with modernist techniques. Spicuzza died at the age of seventy-eight. Sources: L.E.S., "Do Colors Change a Person's disposition? Experiments of a Milwaukee Artist...

Yvonne Jacquette uses pastel on a heavy rag paper to depict an ariel city scene at night with pulsing lights. There is a heavy texture to the paper and the surface is rich and vibra...

Leon Dolice (1892 - 1960) New York Harbor (Brooklyn Bridge), circa 1930-40 Pastel on paper 12 x 19 inches Signed lower right Provenance: Spanierman Gallery, New York The romantic b...

Yvonne Jacquette (American, b. 1935) Tokyo Diptych, 1985 Pastel on paper Overall 17 1/4 x 28 1/2 inches Signed lower center Provenance: Carey Ellis Company, Houston, Texas Brooke Alexander, New York Collection of an American Corporation Exhibited: New York, Brooke Alexander, Yvonne Jacquette: Tokyo Nightviews, April 5 - May 3, 1986, n.p., illustrated; this exhibition later traveled to Brunswick, Maine, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Yvonne Jacquette: Tokyo Nightviews, June 27 - August 24, 1986. Yvonne Jacquette has a preference for high places, a circling plane, a penthouse window, an aerie from which to watch the world. Her work has often depicted the city and man-made landscape from the vantage of angels. It is a privileged perspective, long loved by photographers, who were perhaps the first to recognize the geometric grandeur of the city below. That grandeur structures Jacquette's images but is not its full content. Her work attempts to resolve the visual and emotional pardoxes of the modern metropolis. Only from the tower is there the possibility of order and context. And unlaced beauty. Jacquette first visited Japan in 1982. Nighttime Tokyo, its cars and crowds and canyons of loud Vegas neon, made a vivid and bewildering impression on her. The neon signs, pulsing, scaling the walls of high rises, fascinated the artist, "like Times Square spread over miles." Her fascination was equal parts marvel, confusion, and curiosity—the sparks of art. She returned to Tokyo in May of 1985, choosing hotel rooms with expansive vistas. From these views Jacquette excerpted images for a series of pastel night scenes. The basic forms and colors of each drawing were blocked in during night sessions by the window. She worked in the dark, selecting colors by flashlight. In daylight, she sharpened the geometry and corrected ambiguous passages. She refined the drawings further in the studio until the images read clearly. Photographic correctness was not important. The finished drawings are complete statements, not simply preparatory sketches for paintings. They have the authority of expert witness. In clear, discreet jots of pastel they record the performance of seeing, each touch of color attesting to a moment's close scrutiny. Yvonne Jacquette was born on December 15, 1934 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence from 1952 to 1955, when she moved to New York City. Her late husband was photographer Rudy Burckhardt, and the couple were part of a circle of artist friends that included Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, Red Grooms, and Mimi Gross. She continues to live and work in New York City, as well as in Searsmont, Maine. A flight to San Diego in 1969 sparked Jacquette’s interest in aerial views, after which she began flying in commercial airliners to study cloud formations and weather patterns. She soon started sketching and painting the landscape as seen from above, beginning a process that has developed into a defining element of her art. Her first nocturnal painting...

Untitled (Coastal New York) Pastel on paper 17 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. Framed: 24 1/2 x 30 in. Signed lower right