Myrtle Hoffman Campbell

Modernist Semi Abstract Gouache Still Life Painting With Geometric Plants

Untitled (Still Life with Pink Roses) is an oil on canvas painting by David Spivak (1893-1932) . Presented in a custom gold frame, outer dimensions measure 19 ⅞ x 24 x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 12 x 16 inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born in Philadelphia in 1893, David and his family moved to Denver in 1895 due to his mother’s ill health. He attended elementary and high school in Denver, and was briefly enrolled at the University of Denver, where his mother taught Russian. He was drawn to art at a young age, however the University of Denver did not offer a degree program in fine art, and art education in the Denver area was lacking. Spivak’s father, Dr. Charles Spivak, prominent Denver physician and founder of the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society, was concerned about his son’s career choice, hoping David would instead follow in his footsteps. David’s mother, however, recognized her son’s artistic talent and felt it needed nurturing. In 1912, Spivak moved to Chicago to attend the Chicago Art Institute where he worked under John Morton and Wellington Reynolds (1865 – 1949). After a two-year stint in Chicago, Spivak spent 3 years in New York attending the Arts Students League where he studied under Robert Henri, a prominent Ashcan School artist. Between 1914 and 1917, Spivak mostly painted portraiture, and Henri’s artistic influence can be seen in Spivak’s work during this period. Spivak was drafted into the Army in 1918 because of World War I. He spent a year stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. In 1919, he moved back to Denver in and began working as an artist. His dedication to art extended beyond art making into education. He taught at various high schools throughout Denver, as well as the Denver Academy of Applied Arts, the Denver Art Institute, and the Chappell School of Art. Spivak was also a central figure in the art community, helping to develop the Denver Art Museum, as a founding member, along with Dean Babcock and Albert Bancroft, of the Denver Artists’ Guild in 1928 (where he served as president at the time of his death), and as the head of fine art exhibits at the Colorado State Fair. He believed that bringing art into the lives of all people, regardless of status or class, was paramount. In his short life, Spivak was quite prolific, producing over 300 paintings between 1914 and 1932. He excelled in landscape painting and portraiture, and his style was rooted in impressionism. Spivak’s contemporaries who also painted in an impressionistic manner include Robert Graham, Frank Vavra...

An original modernist still life oil painting by John E. Thompson (1882-1945), table is draped in red cloth and flowers in vase are red, yellow, blue/purple and white with green stem...

Oil on board painting by Paul Kauvar Smith (1893-1977) of a still life of flowers on a table in an interior scene with a mirror in the background. American Modernist still life painting with zinnias and abstract paintings in an artists studio. Presented framed, outer dimensions measure 27 ⅝ x 31 ¾ x 1 ⅛ inches. Image size is 19 ½ x 23 ½ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: In 1915, Paul Kauver Smith studied commercial art and design at the St. Louis School of Fine Art for two years. His studies were interrupted by World War I during which he served as a corporal in the U.S. Army. After the war he returned to the School of Fine Art and also studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis with Fred G. Carpenter, himself a student of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Colarossi Academy in Paris. Carpenter was known as a marvelous colorist who "thought every inch of a painting should be fascinating…and should be as interesting close up as from a distance." His approach is reflected in many of Smith’s paintings, both representational and abstract in style, done later in Colorado. In 1921, Smith relocated to Denver where he studied for two years at the Denver Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, formerly located in Brinton Terrace on 18th Street in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. His teacher was John E. Thompson, another important influence as a pioneer of modernism in Denver. The Academy hired Smith as an instructor in 1923 and that same year the Denver Art Museum included his work for the first time in its 29th annual juried exhibition. He later had two solo shows at the museum, which added his work to its Anne Evans Collection. In 1959 the museum reproduced Houses at Victor, for its Western Heritage Exhibition catalog. During the year of 1928 he witnessed the Articles of Incorporation of the Denver Artists Guild, comprising most of the city’s professional artists. He also belonged to the American Artists Professional League, also organized in 1928 by fifteen members of the Salmagundi Club in New York to protect artists’ interest and promote traditional American art. He was one of some two dozen Colorado artists designated to participate in the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP, 1933-34), the first federally-sponsored program for artists during the Great Depression. Around 1928 Smith became the "Hermit of Stuart Street," and remained a life-long bachelor. One painting, View from My Window, depicts his immediate neighborhood. Living for more than thirty years at 1039 Stuart Street in West Denver, he gave up creature comforts that most people take for granted to have the freedom to devote his life to the pursuit of art. In the first twenty-five years of his career, his paintings focused on the Colorado landscape and its mining towns with their decaying buildings as relics of the past. His piece, Miner’s House at Victor, Colorado illustrates the description of his work in this genre as described by Denver artist and art writer, Arneill Downs, "The jewel-like shapes and colors the artist uses gives the most decrepit objects style. The decaying buildings of ghost towns, grouped together on canvas, glow like a patchwork quilt." Smith described his technique as "I start lean and finish fat." He worked first with turpentine as a medium and ended up with pure pigment put on with a palette knife. In addition to Colorado scenes...

Masks And Flowers, vintage original 1984 oil painting on board by Edward Marecak (1919-1993), semi abstract, cubist style painting of tribal mas...

Oil on canvas painting by mid 20th century Denver artist Paul K. Smith. Semi abstract interior scene of an artists studio with flowers, paint supplies, ...

"High Rolls, New Mexico", is a oil on canvas by Andreas Storrs Andersen (1908-1974) of a wooden church along a dirt road in the mountains with clouds in the background. Painted in a ...

Hand signed and dated leeks on a kitchen table 31.5 X 39.5 framed. 21 X 28.5 sheet without frame. Bernard Chaet (born 1924, Boston, MA - 2012) was an American artist; Chaet is known for his colorful, dynamic modernist paintings and masterful draftsmanship, his association with the Boston Expressionists, and his 40-year career as a Professor of Painting at Yale University. His works also include watercolors and prints. In 1994, he was named a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. Chaet was instrumental in transforming Yale’s traditional art program into one with a more modernist approach that gained national prominence. Chaet melded landscape and abstraction in a traditional established by Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Edvard Munch, Piet Mondrian, and Ferdinand Hodler. His own tenure began in 1951 at Yale, where he worked closely with Josef Albers to revamp Yale’s art program. Between 1959 and 1962 he was the chair of what was then called the Yale Department of Art of the School of Fine Arts — prior to becoming one of the independent professional schools at Yale in 1973. Chaet taught painting and drawing and mentored generations of emerging talents. Chaet was the author of the 1970 textbook “The Art of Drawing” and “An Artist’s Notebook 1979,” both of which have since been reissued several times. In the latter book, alongside examples of work by his favorite artists, are student drawings by Yale graduates such as Robert Birmelin, Michael Mazur and Eugene Baguskas. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1924, Chaet studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then earned a B.A. at Tufts University. Known for his expressionist landscapes and still lifes, Chaet’s work has continuously been shown in galleries in his native Boston, in New York City, and around the country. In 2010, a retrospective of his seascapes was featured at the Cape Ann Historical Society in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he had a home and a summer studio in nearby Rockport. His has also exhibited at David Findlay Gallery in New York and at Swarthmore College. Many of Chaet’s students went on to notable art careers, including Janet Fish, Chuck Close, and Richard Serra. His work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA. Chaet is the recipient of many awards including: the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities, Sabbatical Grant in 1967-68, the National Academy of Fine Arts, Benjamin Altman Award in Painting in 1997, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jimmy Ernst Prize in 2001. Chaet was born and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, MA. He completed a dual program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—studying painting with Karl Zerbe—and Tufts University, graduating with a B.S. in 1949. Chaet is known for his association as a first generation Boston Expressionist. (along with Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine) Chaet was a contributing editor to Arts Magazine. In 1960 he published the book Artists At Work, which features in depths conversations with artists Pat Adams, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Al Blaustein, Hyman Bloom, James Brooks, Robert Engman, Esther Geller, Seymour Lipton, Conrad Marca-Relli, Gabor Peterdi, Irwin Rubin, Elbert Weinberg...

Mary Finlayson "Green Vase with Red Cosmos" Gouache on Canvas with Maple Frame 37 x 31.25 inches, Framed Mary Finlayson’s interest in painting interior spaces portrays how environme...

Mary Finlayson "Green Vase with Monstera" Gouache on Canvas with Maple Frame 37 x 31.25 inches, Framed Mary Finlayson’s interest in painting interior spaces portrays how environment...

Mary Finlayson "Blue Room with Reclining Figurer" Gouache & Spray Paint on Canvas with Maple Frame 43.125 x 49.125 inches, Framed Mary Finlayson’s interest in painting interior spac...

Mary Finlayson "Florals with Geometric Vase" Gouache on Canvas with Maple Frame 25.125 x 21.07 inches, Framed Mary Finlayson’s interest in painting interior spaces portrays how envi...

Flowers in Vase by Paul-Louis Bolot (French 1918-2003) signed (dated 1976 verso) original gouache painting on thick paper/ card unframed condition: very good and sound; the edges hav...