Françoise Pirró

The Old Port Marseille

circa 1970s-80s

'Provençal Landscape', oil on canvas, by Anna Costa (circa 1950s). This is an exceptional landscape painted by the artist in vibrant colours in an Impressio...

'Characters in a Surrealist Landscape', oil on canvas, by Lucien Coutaud (1931). A couple entwine with the male character seemingly in grief, the female not returning with a comforting embrace. In the distant landscape a sole character meanders. This painting seems to be a creation of the artist's dreams, perhaps reflecting events in his personal life. It seems there is a relationship problem. In the world of Surrealists, there is a focus on the unconscious mind through Freudian methods of free association, trance-like states or dreams. Some Surrealists practiced psychic 'automatism' which was automatic writing or drawing, turning off the conscious mind and producing streams of words or images directly from the unconscious. In unlocking the unconscious in this way, Surrealism was individually expressed (Ref. 'The Short Story of Art...

Colour-filled images of fantastical creatures along with birds, snakes, rabbits, beautiful women in yoga poses - all images of Balinese reality and folklore combined in this one abst...

'Les Halles Food Market', oil on canvas (circa 1960s), by Roland Hamon. This artwork captures a typical day in the old food markets of Paris, called Les Ha...

'Old Fishing Boat', oil on canvas, Italian Tuscan School, (1972). Glimmering reflections on the water outline the hull of an old fishing boat in the port...

'Port of Saint-Malo', oil on canvas affixed to board, French Modern School (1984). Although the artist dated this painting '84, it depicts a nostalgic view of the port of Saint-Malo in Western France's, Brittany in 1884 judging by the clothing worn by the characters depicted. The crowd on the shoreline is watching a sailboat regatta starting just inside the port's breakwater. A rather rare sunny day in Brittany brought out the parasols of the sitting ladies on the edge of the old ramparts. The walled city...

Robert Motelski's paintings are exceptional visions of nature, visions of space which surrounds us. They tell about being, fate and passing. They depend on the season of year, the ti...

A striking, bold colourist painting by Vietnamese artist Ngoc Dung (1931-2000), dating from circa 1960. His highly individualistic art is hard to categorise. In the artist"s own wor...

COASTAL THUNDERSTORM Size: 52.5 x 70 cm (including frame) Oil on Canvas An emotive and wonderfully executed mid-century abstract artwork, painted in oil onto canvas and dated 1963. ...

In this artwork the artist uses the medium spontaneously .The paint has been applied thickly to the surface. The resulting work emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of the artist. size is with frame. Motke Blum was born in Racacun, Romania in 1925. Early in his childhood, the Blum family moved to Bukarest where they settled in a house situated near a circus. The circus would become young Blum's greatest love. He befriended several of the clowns and other performers and, when not painting or playing in clay, Blum could be found enjoyoing the company of these spirited entertainers. These experiences would later become a recurring theme in many of his works of art. In 1938, he was taken by the Romanian Iron Guard. When the Germans invaded Romania, Blum was taken to a forced labor camp. Even during his imprisonment, he continued to create art, painting on the walls of the camp. He escaped the camp in 1944 and boarded an immigrants' ship to Israel. One of the three ships in the convoy was sunk by a German torpedo. Motke later incorporated shipwrecks, boats, and other maritime subjects into several of his paintings. Over the course of his long and fruitful career, Blum showed internationally at over fifty one-man-shows with exhibits in Israel, Holland, England, Belgium, the United States, France, Australia, and more. His art has been commissioned for public buildings and by prominant figures in Israel and around the world, and a series of posters were commissioned by the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Tourism. Giving back to the community has been a focus throughout his life. After establishing a studio at Chutzot Hayotzer, Motke welcomed schools and both adults and children with special needs, using painting...

Efraim Modzelevich (1931-1995) Work is abstract in subject, and expressive in terms of technique. The artist uses a muted color palette, and thick layers of paint to build up his co...

Wonderful scene of the Moulin Rouge cabaret nightclub at Place Pigalle in Paris. Painted in wonderful moody blue and red colors. Size includes frame. Abram Abraham Krol was born January 22, 1919, in Pabianice (Lodz), Poland. Abram Krol went to France in 1938 to study civil engineering at the University of Caen. In 1939 at the beginning of World War II he joined the Foreign Legion. After he was demobilized, he became a mechanic in a garage in Avignon. Although Jewish, he survived the war with a false identity. In 1943, Krol started studying to be an artist, taking courses in sculpture at the city’s School of Fine Art. He also began studying painting and self-described himself as a “Sunday painter.” Krol moved to Paris in 1944. The first exhibition of his work was in 1946 in the Katia Granoff Gallery in Paris. After the war, Krol took up engraving, studying that art form with an engraver he met in Paris. Krol reflected his Hasidic childhood often using Biblical themes in his art works. He said, During all my years of childhood I had read the Bible endlessly. I came back to the Bible because I was on solid ground there. It was part of the assertion of my own truth after a time of complacency. It seemed to me that in painting or engraving there were so many reefs to avoid, so many possibilities of setback, that I had to have all the odds in my favor do what I could—say what I had to say. Krol illustrated over 20 literary works from the late 1940s through the 1960s. He also engraved medals for the Paris mint and painted murals for schools in France. He designed tapestries and painted approximately 200 enamels. Museums and libraries which own Krol’s art works include the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the British Museum; Houghton Library, Harvard; Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Krol has had numerous one-man shows throughout Europe, Brazil, and in California. In 1960, Krol was invited to the Venice Biennale. He was awarded the Critics Prize in 1958. He also won the Feneon Prize among other honors. Krol died on October 9, 2001. The School of Paris, Ecole de Paris, was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance of Paris as a center of Western art in the early decades of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1940 the city drew artists from all over the world and became a centre for artistic activity. School of Paris was used to describe this loose community, particularly of non-French artists, centered in the cafes, salons and shared workspaces and galleries of Montparnasse. Before World War I, a group of expatriates in Paris created art in the styles of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism. The group included artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Associated French artists included Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes. The term "School of Paris" was used in 1925 by André Warnod to refer to the many foreign-born artists who had migrated to Paris. The term soon gained currency, often as a derogatory label by critics who saw the foreign artists—many of whom were Jewish—as a threat to the purity of French art. Art critic Louis Vauxcelles, noted for coining the terms "Fauvism" and "Cubism", Waldemar George, himself a French Jew, in 1931 lamented that the Ecole de paris, School of Paris name "allows any artist to pretend he is French. it refers to French tradition but instead annihilates it. The artists working in Paris between World War I and World War II experimented with various styles including Cubism, Orphism, Surrealism and Dada. Foreign and French artists working in Paris included Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Constantin Brancusi, Raoul Dufy, Tsuguharu Foujita, artists from Belarus like Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, and Jacques Lipchitz, the Polish artist Marek Szwarc and others such as Russian-born prince Alexis Arapoff. A significant subset, the Jewish artists, came to be known as the Jewish School of Paris or the School of Montparnasse. The core members were almost all Jews, and the resentment expressed toward them by French critics in the 1930s was unquestionably fueled by anti-Semitism. Jewish members of the group included Emmanuel Mané-Katz, Chaim Soutine, Adolphe Féder...