Vaclav Vytlacil

"Circus Act"

Signed & Dated LR (Highly exhibited) The New York Times, Sunday October 30, 1949 by Howard Devree. "Both as teacher and as painter Vaclav Vytlacil has been a decided force in contem...

Ashley John is proud to offer this artwork by: Gershon Benjamin (1899 - 1985) Gershon Benjamin is a painter of portraits, landscapes, still lives, and the urban scene. He had a pro...

Vaclav Vytlacil (Vas-lav Vit-la-chil) was born in New York City in 1892 to Czech parents, but was raised in Chicago. He was an artist since boyhood, becoming the youngest student to ...

Signed Lower Right Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...

Signed and Dated Lower Right Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the ...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Mercedes Matter (1913 - 2001) Mercedes Matter, daughter of noted Philidelphia artist Arthur B Carles...

Abstract female figure on a blue ground. Monogrammed and dated in the lower centre. Josef Steiner (1899 Munich - 1977 ibid.) lived through a Germany in all its facets as an artist. A...

This diptych painting of black and pink is slightly recessed within a black frame. The left side depicts simple marks using graphite pencil. The image on the right conveys a circul...

Oil on masonite. Signed lower right and on verso. 30 x 24 in. 31 x 25 in. (framed) Custom framed in maple. Louis Leon Ribak was born in the Russian empirical governorate of Grodno in 1902. A long-disputed region that is ethnically Lithuanian, at present day, Grodno is located in the western reaches of the Republic of Belarus, near the borders with Poland and Lithuania. At the age of ten, Ribak and his family immigrated to New York City. In 1922, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, followed by studies at the Art Students League (1923) and the Educational Alliance (1924). Ribak’s oeuvre can be largely delineated between two stylistic phases: social realism and abstraction, the former taking hold during the 1930s and 40s. During that period, he had several solo exhibitions at the A.C.A. Gallery in New York, while also regularly exhibiting with “An American Group Inc.” - a cohort of socially-conscious painters that included Stuart Davis, Reginald Marsh, Maurice Sterne, and Raphael Soyer. In 1933, Ribak assisted Diego Rivera on the mural for the lobby of Rockefeller Center, while also being employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a muralist. Louis Ribak met fellow artist Beatrice Mandelman at a dance sponsored by the Artists Union in New York. They were married in 1942, and shortly thereafter, he was drafted for military service in World War II. After his discharge from the service in 1942 due to difficulties with asthma, Mandelman and Ribak traveled west to visit his former mentor John Sloan in Santa Fe, NM. By this time, the couple had become disenchanted with the art scene in New York, and in light of the need to find a healthier climate for Ribak’s asthma - as well as reputed FBI surveillance based on political affiliations with Communist sympathizers - they decided to permanently relocate to the emerging artists’ colony of Taos, NM in 1944. This change of scenery ushered in the second phase of Ribak’s stylistic career, with his work shifting from social realism toward abstraction. He was captivated by the landscape and the diverse cultures of northern New Mexico, the influences of which began to appear in his work. Ribak founded the Taos Valley Art School in 1947, offering no ideology to his students; instead arguing that the adoption of a single approach would lead to academicism. Ribak was an integral force in the development of the Taos Moderns...

Beautiful oil painting on board, attributed to Eugene Pizzuto (1925 - 2004). Framed size: 32 x 44 cm Framing: Hand-stained and waxed oak tray frame. Signature: Unsigned. * About t...

Oil on board, frame included

Oil on board, frame included