Henri Matisse

Figure allongée devant un carrelage (Figure Lying in front of a Tiled Floor)

1929

Artist: Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) Title: "Figure endormie dans un intérieur (Interior with Sleeping Figure)" *Signed and numbered by Matisse in...

Artist: (after) Raphael (Italian, 1483-1520) Title: "L'Amour Montrant Psyche Aux Graces" Portfolio: Gazette des Beaux-Arts Year: 1883 Medium: Original Etching on chine appliqué on wo...

Artist: Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) (Swiss-French, 1887-1965) Title: "Unité, Planche 10" (Set of 2) Portfolio: Unité *Signed by Le Corbusier in pencil lower right. It is...

Artist: André Masson (French, 1896-1987) Title: "Le Fil d'Ariane (Ariadne's Clew)" Portfolio: For Meyer Schapiro *Signed by Masson in pencil lower right Year: 1973 Medium: Original Etching with Aquatint on Rives BFK paper Limited edition: 15/100 Printer: Atelier Crommelynck, Paris, France Publisher: The Committee to Endow a Chair in Honor of Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University, New York, NY Sheet size: 18" x 13.5" Image size: 11.5" x 8.5" Condition: Never framed, has been professionally stored away for decades. In excellent condition Rare Notes: Numbered by Masson in pencil lower left. Comes from the 1974 "For Meyer Schapiro" portfolio of twelve print editions by various artists. The "For Meyer Schapiro" portfolio consisted of four lithographs (one with embossing), three screenprints (one with stamp additions), two lithographs and screenprints (one with embossing), two etching and aquatints, and one duplicated drawing. Various printers were used. In addition to Masson, the following artists also contributed to the portfolio: Stanley William Hayter, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Saul Steinberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Biography: André Masson (b. Balagny-sur-Thérain 1896 - Paris 1987) was a French artist. He was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris. He fought for France during World War I and was seriously injured. His early works display an interest in cubism. He later became associated with surrealism, and he was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson experimented with altered states of consciousness with artists such as Antonin Artaud, Michel Leiris, Joan Miró, Georges Bataille, Jean Dubuffet, and Georges Malkine, who were neighbors of his studio in Paris. By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatic drawing rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme, and making a number of paintings in reaction to the Spanish Civil War. Under the German occupation of France during World War II, his work was condemned by the Nazis as degenerate. With the assistance of Varian Fry in Marseille, Masson escaped the Nazi regime on a ship to the French island...

Artist: Emil Fuchs (Austrian, 1866-1929) Title: "Confidences" *Signed by Fuchs in pencil lower right. It is also signed in the plate (printed signature) lower left Circa: 1920 Medium: Original Drypoint Etching on unbranded white wove paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer: the artist Fuchs himself, New York?, NY Publisher: likely the artist Fuchs himself, New York?, NY Sheet size: 7" x 8.5" Image size: 5" x 7" Condition: Never framed, has been professionally stored away for decades. Presently tipped into an archival storage mat. In mint condition Extremely rare. Lovely work Notes: Various pencil inscriptions at bottom in margins including the title. "Imp" pencil inscribed by Fuchs after his signature denoting he was the printer of this work. There is an example of this very same work within the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The MET specifies their example was acquired as a gift directly from the artist Emil Fuchs himself in 1931. Biography: Emil Fuchs, MVO, (9 August 1866 – 13 January 1929) was an Austrian and American sculptor, medallist, painter, and author who worked in Vienna, London and New York. He painted portraits of Queen Victoria and Edward VII and was fashionable among London high society in the early 20th century. He was born in Vienna on 9 August 1866. During his years in Austria, Germany and Rome he was a sculptor and medallist who eventually began to study painting as well. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Edmund von Hellmer and Viktor Oskar Tilgner. He then attended the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin where he studied under Fritz Schaper and Anton von Werner...

Artist: Félix Bracquemond (French, 1833-1914) Title: "Canards Surpris (Surprised Ducks)" *Signed by Bracquemond in pencil lower right. It is also initial signed in ink lower left Year: 1882 Medium: Original Drypoint Etching on cream Japanese paper Limited edition: 100 Printer: Imprimerie Lemercier, Paris, France Publisher: likely the artist Bracquemond himself, Paris, France Reference: "Les graveurs du XIXe siècle: Guide de l'amateur d'estampes modernes", Vol. XII, Paris, 1885–1892 - Henri Béraldi: cat. No. 778; "Inventaire du Fonds Francais Apres 1800" - Jean Adhémar, Jacques Lethève: cat. No. 394, page 383; Laran No. 394 Framing: Recently framed in a gold Baroque moulding and rag matting from Holland Framed size: 23.75" x 19.75" Sheet size: 15.25" x 11.5" Image size: 14" x 10.5" Condition: In excellent condition Notes: "B" inscribed by Bracquemond in ink lower left. There is an example of this work in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Biography: Félix Bracquemond was born in Paris. He was trained in early youth as a trade lithographer, until Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, took him to his studio. His portrait of his grandmother, painted by him at the age of nineteen, attracted Théophile Gautier's attention at the Salon. He applied himself to engraving and etching about 1853, and played a leading and brilliant part in the revival of the etcher's art in France. Altogether he produced over eight hundred plates, comprising portraits, landscapes, scenes of contemporary life, and bird-studies, besides numerous interpretations of other artist's paintings, especially those of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Gustave Moreau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. After having been attached to the Sèvres porcelain factory in 1870, he accepted a post as art manager of the Paris atelier of the firm of Haviland of Limoges. He was connected by a link of firm friendship with Édouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler, and all the other fighters in the impressionist cause, and received all the honors that await the successful artist in France, including the grade of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1889. Bracquemond was a prominent figure in artistic and literary circles in the second half of the 19th century. He was close to writers such as Edmond de Goncourt and critic Gustave Geffroy, and numbered among his friends Millet and Corot, Henri Fantin-Latour, Degas and the Impressionist circle, and Auguste Rodin. He was one of the more prolific printmakers of his time and he was awarded the grande medaille d'honneur at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. He was also a painter, ceramist, and an innovator in decorative arts. Gabriel Weisberg called him the "molder of artistic taste in his time". Indeed, it was he who recognised the beauty of the Hokusai woodcuts used as packing around a shipment of Japanese china, a discovery which helped change the look of late 19th-century art. He married French Impressionist artist Marie Bracquemond...

This abstract figure by feminist modern artist Joan Semmel is almost grotesque in its depiction of a nude body crouched on the floor. Their hands brace against the ground, shoulders ...

Leonor Fini - Untitled - Original Handsigned Etching Circa 1982 On colored paper Handsigned and Numbered Edition: 275 Dimensions: 69 x 52.5 cm Leonor Fini is considered one of the most important women artists of the mid-twentieth century, along with Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning – most of whom Fini knew well. Her career, which spanned some six decades, included painting, graphic design, book illustration, product design (the renowned torso-shaped perfume bottle for Schiaparelli’s Shocking), and set and costume design for theatre, ballet, opera, and film. In this compellingly readable, exhaustively researched account, author Peter Webb brings Fini’s provocative art and unconventional personal life, as well as the vibrant avant-garde world in which she revolved, vividly in life. Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 (August 30 – January 18, 1996, Paris) to Italian and Argentine parents, Leonor grew up in Trieste, Italy, raised by her strong-willed, independent mother, Malvina. She was a virtually self-taught artist, learing anatomy directly from studying cadavers in the local morgue and absorbing composition and technique from the Old Masters through books and visits to museums. Fini’s fledging attempts at painting in Trieste let her to Milan, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1929, and then to Paris in 1931. Her vivacious personality and flamboyant attire instantly garnered her a spotlight in the Parisian art world and she soon developed close relationships with the leading surrealist writers and painters, including Paul Eluard, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, who became her lover for a time. The only surrealist she could not abide because of his misogyny was André Breton. Although she repeatedly exhibited with them, she never considered herself a surrealist. The American dealer Julien Levy, very much impressed by Fini’s painting and smitten by her eccentric charms, invited her to New York in 1936, where she took part in a joint gallery exhibition with Max Ernst and met many American surrealists, including Joseph Cornell and Pavel Tchelitchew. Her work was included in MoMA’s pivotal Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism exhibition, along with De Chirico, Dali, Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. In 1939 in Paris she curated an exhibition of surrealist furniture for her childhood friend Leo Castelli for the opening of his first gallery. Introductions to her exhibition catalogues were written by De Chirico, Ernst, and Jean Cocteau. A predominant theme of Fini’s art is the complex relationship between the sexes, primarily the interplay between the dominant female and the passive, androgynous male. In many of her most powerful works, the female takes the form of a sphinx, often with the face of the artist. Fini was also an accomplished portraitist; among her subjects were Stanislao Lepri...

Etching monogrammed in the plate. Illustration for a Robert Ganzo's poem "Lespugue" Editions Marcel Sautier, Paris, 1966. Conditions: Good Conditions Dimensions: 25,5 x 16,5 cm. Vellum paper Référence Czwiklitzer n°55. 1890 Zadkine was born on the 14th of July in Vitebsk, a city in Belarussia, on the Dvina. His father Ephime teaches classical languages at the local seminar. His mother Sophie Lester descended from Scots, who emigrated at the time of Peter the Great. 1905 His parents send him to Sunderland, in the North of England, where his mother’s family lives. He studies English and attends modelling courses at the local Art School. 1905-1909 He travels to London without his parents permission where he attends courses at the Regent Street Polytechnicum. In order to earn his living, he plans to work with a stonecutter. He visits the British Museum and studies classical sculpture there. Returns to Smolensk where he produces his first sculpture. Goes back to London. 1909-1910 Zadkine settles in Paris and studies in the ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Finds a workshop in a building called La Ruche, in the XVe arrondissement. 1911 Zadkine presents statues and drawings at the annual Salon d’Automne and at the Salon des Indépendants. It is the ‘cubists’ who draw his attention in Paris. Is essentially close to Russian students who get together in a cafe of the ‘Quartier Latin’. Has himself called Joe Zadkine until 1914. 1912-1913 Finds a room in the neighbourhood of Montparnasse, in the rue de Vaugirard. Studies Roman sculpture. Zadkine is immortalized by his neighbour, photographer Marc Vaux, in his new workshop. Meets Brancusi, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Antoine Bourdelle, Leopold Survage and Robert Delaunay. Henri Matisse visits Zadkine’s workshop. 1914-1915 Exhibition at the Freie Sezession in Berlin, at De Onafhankelijken in Amsterdam (Holland) and at the Allied Artists Association in London. Thanks to collector Paul Rodocanachi, he can settle in a workshop in the rue Rousselet. Becomes friends with Modigliani. 1916-1917 Works as a stretcher-bearer on the front. Produces drawings and watercolours dealing with war. Zadkine is discharged in 1917. He says he is ‘bodily and spiritually’ ruined by the war. After his stay in the Epernay hospital he recovers in Bruniquel, in the southwest of France. 1918-1919 Makes a series of 20 war etchings...

This original etching with drypoint is hand signed in pencil by the artist "Marc Chagall" at the lower right corner. It is also hand numbered in pencil from the edition of 100, at t...

Figures Composition. 1984. Etching and drypoint. 6 1/2 x 5. Three states, two artist's proofs. Each printed on cream wove paper. Each titled, dated, and signed 'Shortis N[ew] Y[ork]'...

Adolescence. (Kathleen Nancy Woodward). 1932. Etching. Fletcher 75 state vi. Image: 14 3/8 x 10 7/16 (sheet 16 3/8 x 12 1/4. Total edition 91). Illustrated: Guichard, British Etchers...