Gouache Still-life Drawings and Watercolors

Mid 20th Century, Still Life, gouache and watercolour on paper by French artist Nelly Marez-Darley. Signed bottom right, presented in wood frame. A colourful and charming rendition of fruit on a plate and flowers in a vase with an interesting play on perspective and form, showing some of the influence of Cubist extraction. Nelly Désirée Émilie Marez decided at a very young age that painting was a vocation for her, “the great adventure of her life”. After having attended the School of Fine Arts in Valenciennes from 1924, she entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1928 where, in the studio of Lucien Simon, her fellow students included Yves Brayer and André Hamburg. She married Georges Darley in 1932, son of the sculptor Maxime Darley. A trip to Spain, during which she met Manuel de Falla introduced her to the works of Goya and El Greco. Then, from 1932 to 1935, she stayed in Lebanon where her son Bernard was born in 1935. During this stay, she painted and opened a painting academy with Georges Cyr, exhibiting with him at the St. Georges Hotel in Beirut in November 1934 and, during trips to Syria and Palestine, at the Steimatzky's Gallery in Jerusalem in April 1935. Back in Paris she exhibited there in March 1938. From 1940, Nelly Marez-Darley moved to Algiers where she rubbed shoulders with the intellectual milieu dominated by Albert Camus and Max-Pol Fouchet, as well as the sculptor Jean Peyrissac. Her 1941 exhibition at the René Famin gallery in Algiers was prefaced by Jean Alazard, curator of the museum. In 1944, she exhibited in Oran, at Robert Martin's Colline gallery. The only woman painter in the armies, she was sent to Baden-Baden for "artistic documentation" after the German capitulation: the Portrait of General Antoine Béthouart that she painted there became part of the exhibition Former Painters in the Armies at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1946. Back in Paris in 1945, installed rue Campagne-Première, Nelly Marez-Darley became friends with Alix Ghillain – French translator of Capital by Karl Marx –, the philosopher Bernard Groethuysen, Clara Malraux, the writers Francis Ponge and Jean Tardieu, the sculptors Simone Boisecq and Karl-Jean Longuet. She exhibited in 1946 in Paris. The Breteau gallery presents her works, now non-figurative, in 1949, prefaced by Clara Malraux. From 1950 to 1953, she worked in Morocco and exhibited in Casablanca. Nelly Marez-Darley returned permanently to Paris in 1954. She met Léon Zack, Atlan and the sculptor Étienne Hajdu...

Modern green, grey, and pink abstract leaf pattern painting by textile designer John Little. The work was created as a proposed design for a wallpaper and features the original color codes in the front lower left corner. Currently hung in a solid black frame with a large white margin. Dimensions Without Frame: H 27.25 in. x W 35.5 in. Artist Biography: A painter and textile designer, John Little is best known for gestural works filled with boldly explosive color that reflect the influences of his teacher Hans Hofmann and for his involvement in the Abstract Expressionist movement in East Hampton, where he moved in the late 1940s. In East Hampton Little congregated with Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and the other artists who were the leading innovators in the New York School. John Little was born in Sanford, Alabama. He left home at the age of fourteen to become an artist, and moved to Buffalo, New York, in 1923. After spending a year working as a stevedore on the docks to save money, he enrolled at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and developed an interest in singing. In 1927 he moved to New York City where he continued his vocal work and studied operatic literature. He also became involved in textile design, opening his own store in 1920, called John Little Studios: Fabric and Wallpaper Design. He ran the store until 1950. In 1933 John Little resumed his painting studies at the Art Students League in New York under the guidance of George Grosz (1893-1959). The following year he made his first visit to East Hampton, Long Island, which he would eventually call home. Later in the decade, he traveled to Paris where he became familiar with European modernism. On his return to America, he taught textile design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He hired Josephine Watkins to work for him; she later became his wife. Little's textile store and teaching job gave him a financial security that was rare during the Depression, and he never found it necessary to find employment with the Works Progress Administration. At the end of the decade, John Little studied with Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) in New York and Provincetown. Little was greatly influenced by Hofmann, particularly by his views on color theory. In 1942 John Little joined the Navy as an aerial photographer. In the late 1940s he purchased a rundown house on Three Mile Harbor...

Signed lower right, 'J. de Gavardie' for Jean de Gavardie (French, 1909-1961), titled lower left, in margin, 'Les Capucines' and painted circa 1955. ...

Donald Stacy "Fruit Still Life in Green" c.1950s Gouache on paper 24" x 18" unframed $950 Unsigned Came from artist's estate *Listed price reflects custom framing selected by seller....

Wayne La Com was born in Glendale, California in 1922. He grew up in Southern California and attended art schools in Los Angeles where he studied waterco...