Items Similar to 1936 Woodblock Print Venus of 23rd St. Skid Row Woodcut NYC Great Depression WPA
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 7
Joseph Solman1936 Woodblock Print Venus of 23rd St. Skid Row Woodcut NYC Great Depression WPA1936
1936
About the Item
A great New york City street scene in a modernist realist style. done in the the great depression period.
Mat is 17.5x14, sheet measures 13x10 image is 10x4.75
Joseph Solman (January 25, 1909 – April 16, 2008) was a Jewish American painter, a founder of The Ten, a group of New York City Expressionist painters in the 1930s. His best known works include his "Subway Gouaches" depicting travellers on the New York City Subway.
Born in Vitebsk, Belarus, Russian Empire, he was brought to America from the Russian Empire as a child in 1912, Solman was a prodigious draftsman and knew, in his earliest teens, that he would be an artist. He went straight from high school to the National Academy of Design, though he says he learned more by sketching in the subway on the way back from school late at night: people "pose perfectly when they're asleep." In 1929, Solman saw the inaugural show at the Museum of Modern Art featuring Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne.
In 1934, Solman had his first one-man show, much influenced by the French modern artist Georges Rouault. One critic was impressed by "the mystery that lurks in deserted streets in the late twilight." Another noted that Solman's color had "an astonishingly rich quality that burns outward beneath the surface."
Joseph Solman was, with Mark Rothko, the unofficial co-leader of The Ten, a group of expressionist painters including Louis Schanker, Adolph Gottlieb, Ben Zion and Ilya Bolotowsky, who exhibited as the "Whitney Dissenters" at the Mercury Galleries in New York City in 1938. The members, all immigrant Jewish New Yorkers with an interest in European Expressionism, presented an urban, abstract, formal style. A champion of modernism, Solman was elected an editor of Art Front Magazine when its other editors, art historian Meyer Schapiro and critic Harold Rosenberg, were still partial to Social Realism. But Solman never believed in abstraction for abstraction's sake. "I have long discovered for myself," Solman has said, "that what we call the subject yields more pattern, more poetry, more drama, greater abstract design and tension than any shapes we may invent." As his colleagues in the Ten advanced toward a more non-objective art, Solman warmed toward representation. An artist in the Works Project Administration (WPA) during the depression, Solman met and worked with and befriended many great artists, like Milton Avery. “Avery had a big influence on me when I was young and working in the WPA,” said Solman. “That was a great program, I couldn’t have worked without it. It’s where I saw Paul Klee’s work, which I liked very much.” By the early 1950s, when the Abstract Expressionism he had helped to develop was the mainstream in avant garde art, he was done with it. With Edward Hopper and Jack Levine, he began a magazine called "Reality." It featured the work of figurative painters, then terribly out of fashion, but its central editorial stance was that artists should be able to paint however and whatever they liked. In writing about a purchase of a typical 1930s Solman street scene for the Wichita Museum, director Howard Wooden put it this way: "Solman has produced the equivalent of an abstract expressionist painting a full decade before the abstract expressionist movement came to dominate the American art scene, but without abandoning identifiable forms."
In 1964, The Times, discussing his well-known subway gouaches (done while commuting to his some-time job as a racetrack pari-mutuel clerk), called him a "Pari-Mutuel Picasso." In 1985, on the occasion of a 50-year retrospective, The Washington Post wrote: "It appears to have dawned, at last, on many collectors that this is art that has already stood the acid test of time.
- Creator:Joseph Solman (1909-2008, American)
- Creation Year:1936
- Dimensions:Height: 17.5 in (44.45 cm)Width: 14 in (35.56 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:good. measurements include mat, mat with minor wear. minor wrinkling.
- Gallery Location:Surfside, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU38213822742
About the Seller
4.9
Platinum Seller
These expertly vetted sellers are 1stDibs' most experienced sellers and are rated highest by our customers.
Established in 1995
1stDibs seller since 2014
1,549 sales on 1stDibs
Typical response time: 1 hour
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Surfside, FL
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 3 days of delivery.
More From This SellerView All
- Mexican Modernist Kite Painting, Stencil, Woodcut Print Hand SignedBy Francisco ToledoLocated in Surfside, FLFrancisco Benjamín López Toledo (born July 17, 1940, Juchitán, Oaxaca) is a Mexican painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. He studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca and the Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, where he studied graphic arts with Guillermo Silva Santamaria...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Modern Mixed Media
MaterialsPaint, Woodcut, Stencil
- Shana Tova, New Year Woodcut Israeli Judaica Early Bezalel School Woman ArtistBy Shulamith Wittenberg MillerLocated in Surfside, FLSigned in Hebrew and English. Titled. Size matted 16 x 12, image is 3.5x5.5 inches. Shulamit Wittenberg Miller Born 1908 in Jerusalem, attended Bezalel Art School, Jerusalem, under P...Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- Post Soviet Nonconformist Avant Garde Russian Israeli Woodcut Woodblock PrintBy Michail GrobmanLocated in Surfside, FLWoodcut woodblock (small possibility it is a Silkscreen Serigraph) print hand signed, numbered. Michail Grobman (Russian: Михаил Гробман, Hebrew: מיכאיל גרובמן, born 1939) is an a...Category
20th Century Modern Animal Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- Leonard Baskin Woodblock Broadside Print Woodcut Vintage Poster in Red and BlackBy Leonard BaskinLocated in Surfside, FLThis is an original gallery show poster the Boris Mirsky Gallery, Newbury St. Boston. titled Sculpture Prints Drawings. It is dated 1962. it is in red and black. Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher. Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated Sculpto to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). The Funeral Contege (1997) bronze, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C. His public commissions include a bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, erected in 1994 for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums. The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. The McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works (some religious and biblical), most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin. In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery, they showed many great artists, Chaim Koppelman, for many years, headed the gallery's Print Division; printmakers such as Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover...Category
1960s Modern Portrait Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- City Evening, Large Scale Whiteline Woodcut New York City at Night ed. 25By Aline FeldmanLocated in Surfside, FLAline Feldman was born in 1928 and grew up in Kansas. She studied design and printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis under Werner Drewes and Fred Becker, respectively. She studied painting at Indiana University...Category
1980s American Modern Figurative Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- 1966 Woodcut "Fleet" Modernist PrintBy Roger MartinLocated in Surfside, FLGenre: Modern Subject: Landscape Medium: Print, Woodcut Surface: Paper Dimensions w/Frame: 31" x 15 1/2" Roger was born in the Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, MA, the son of Capt. Roger Martin and Ellie Emilia Oker, in 1925. His father was born in Rockport, of Portuguese heritage, and his mother was born in Finland. He graduated from Rockport Highschool in 1942. While in high school Roger prepared lobsters for tourists at the Roy Moore Lobster Company on Bearskin Neck and sang and played harmonica with Tony Torissi’s hillbilly band. Roger enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942 and mustered out in 1946, ending his military career as a member of the USCG canine corps only two weeks from going to the Pacific with a Marine detachment. After having lived on both coasts (Manhattan and Los Angeles) he returned to his home town from the West Coast, vowing to never leave again, and he hasn’t. When he returned to Cape Ann he entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where he majored in book design and illustration, graduating with honors. He illustrated a number of textbooks for D.C. Heath, Beacon Press, and other Boston publishers, as well as provided illustrations for the New York Sunday Times, the New Yorker magazine, the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and a book for the United Church of Christ. Roger also designed, carved and gold-leafed pipe shades for a number of C. B. Fisk pipe organs, builders of tracker action pipe organs, including those at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He began his teaching career in Rockport, teaching elementary grade art, following that with four years teaching at the New England School of Art in Boston. Roger became a founding faculty member of the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, where he taught for twenty years, retiring to make paintings. He was also elected Rockport’s Poet Laureate in the 1990s and in addition wrote and published three books about Rockport. Roger Martin has exhibited his work throughout New England and beyond. He has shown his work in Portland, ME; New York City; Andover’s Addison Gallery; the Boston ICA; galleries on Newbury Street in Boston; the Rockport Art Association; the Cape Ann Historical Museum (where he is part of the permanent collection); and many others. His work is represented in many private collections, including those of John...Category
1960s Modern Landscape Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
You May Also Like
- Ex Libris - Axel Kock - Woodcut - Mid-20th CenturyLocated in Roma, ITEx Libris - Axel Kock is a Modern Artwork realized in the mid-20th Century. Woodcut print on paper. The work is glued on a cardboard. Good conditions.Category
Mid-20th Century Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Ex Libris - Jos Verschuuren - Mid 20th CenturyLocated in Roma, ITEx Libris - Jos Verschuuren is a Modern Artwork realized in the mid-20th Century. Woodcut print on paper. The work is glued on a cardboard. Good conditions.Category
Mid-20th Century Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Ex-Libris - Woodcut - Mid 20th CenturyLocated in Roma, ITEx-Libris is an Artwork realized in Mid 20th Century. Woodcut on green paper. The work is glued on ivory cardboard. Total dimensions: 20 x 15 cm. Good conditions. The artist wan...Category
Mid-20th Century Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Ex-Libris - Jac de Groo - Woodcut by A. Schellart - 1935Located in Roma, ITEx-Libris - Jac de Groot is an Artwork realized in 1935 by A. Schellart. Woodcut B./W. print on ivory paper. The work is glued on ivory cardboard. Signed on plate and dated on back...Category
1930s Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Ex-Libris - A. Vercammen - Woodcut - 1985Located in Roma, ITEx-Libris - A. Vercammen is an Artwork realized in 1985. Woodcut on ivory paper. The work is glued on grey cardboard. Hand Signed on the right margin and dated on back. Total dime...Category
1980s Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Ex-Libris - Ettore Scola - Woodcut - 1967Located in Roma, ITEx-Libris - Ettore Scola is an Artwork realized in 1967. Woodcut on colored paper. The work is glued on ivory cardboard. Hand Signed and dated on the lower margin. Total dimensions...Category
1960s Modern More Art
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
