Mary Lou Siefker Paintings

Acrylic on masonite. This is a pivotal work in deep and radiant cobalt blue from 1950. It dipicts calligraphic and hieroglyph structures over a grid and pyramidal base by the first generation abstract expressionist. Provenance: Skinner: November 13, 1992 [Lot 00219}, The entry in the Skinner catalog indicates that the painting came directly from the artist to the family of the consignor to Skinner. Kaminsky Auctions. There is an unbroken paper trail that traces the ownership of the painting from the current owner, through two auction houses to the artist. Perfect unbroken provenance. Pousette-Dart was among the most inventive of the Abstract Expressionist generation, His uncanny talent was to expand the nature of abstraction and still make each mark each element very much his own; a reflection of what he called   "the concealed power of the spirit," he said, “not of the brute physical form."   His was not aiming for a singular, realized aesthetic formula but to expand the possibilities of painting; the transcendental in painting. Typical of such invention and exploration is this  painting  Untitled 1950 when the artist was only 34 years old and represented by one of the champions of the new American painting, Betty Parsons.  
A banner year for Pousette-Dart, the Museum of Modern Art acquired their first painting by the Minnesota born artist.  He worked on easel size works such as this painting an oil on masonite. At the same time Pousette-Dart was also working on larger scale works such as Path of the Hero, running over ten feet in length now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Both contain fields of color articulated by a highly sophisticated white hieroglyphic vocabulary. Rather than demonstrate an expressionist sensibility, Pousette-Dart harnesses his more cerebral ideas transforming thick areas of paint into a more refined composition of geometric forms akin to the pattern and forms of say a stained glass window. In a way he is looking back at Fugue, 1940 a black and white composition which makes use of a similar format of painting albeit smaller. Color and form are minimal, but what Pousette-Dart has maximized is the rhythmic and syncopated character of painting casting his ideas into purely symbolic terms that one might link to the pictograms of Adolph Gottlieb. Nonetheless, nature is always at the core of Pousette-Dart’s thinking and dreaming. Here he has transformed the local Ramapo Mountains—where he will eventually move with his family to live and work— into a complex series of articulated fragments linked by style, scale and color.  The painting’s imagery built on two large triangles and reduced to just two colors, cobalt blue and white all outlined in black.  Pousette-Dart symbols stacked in horizontal and vertical rows:  blue is ground, white is language, symbolic of light, consciousness and awareness . The painting maintains a mystical character images compounded that formulate a secret code and linked to the series of white paintings Pousette-Dart authored in the first half of the 1950s. Get up close to the picture and you discover images within images a kind of picture puzzle...

Artist: Chuck Close Title: Tavern Year of Work: 1960 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signature: Signed & Dated Upper Left Dimensions: framed 31 x 25 unframed 30 x 24 Provenance: Chuck Close, Marjorie Dalton (Dear friend of Chuck), Private Collection. Tavern, is truly a rare find, an original oil on canvas, in compelling blues and grays with a touch of gold and orange. This work reveals more imagery and detail the longer one enjoys it. This painting was created during his years studying in Yale Art School, and draws different qualities to each new viewer similar to a Rorschach. Close's work is in the collections of most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City. and the Tate Modern in London. Artist Bio: Chuck Close – (1940-2021) an American painter, artist and photographer born in Monroe, Washington. Early childhood illnesses including a neuromuscular condition, nephritis and dyslexia were compounded later in life by a condition known as prosopagnosia (face blindness), which may have inspired him to do portraits. Most of his early, large-format portraits are based on photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family and friends, often other artists. Close often painted abstract portraits of himself and others, which hang in collections internationally. Even though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he continued to paint inspired by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers. Being much in the mainstream of pop art, a fragment of Close's portrait of singer-songwriter Paul Simon...

Acrylic on canvas. Signed, titled, and dated on verso. 86 x 74 in. 87.25 x 75.25 in. (framed) Please note: Our framing studio could not accommodate the scale of this work, so it is being sold as-acquired. The canvas is housed in an original “studio strip” frame installed by the artist. Please see condition notes below for additional details and an assessment of condition. Provenance Steve Chase Design, Palm Springs, CA Ronnie Landfield was born in the Bronx, NY on January 9, 1947 - the same day as his older brother. As a teenager, he was encouraged to pursue a career as an artist, subsequently creating his first real paintings around the age of 14. He was particularly influenced by a Life magazine article from 1961 on the Abstract Expressionists, most notably: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. After stints at the Art Students League, the Kansas City Art Institute, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of California at Berkeley, Landfield’s professional career as a painter began in New York in 1965. The following year, after completing a major series of hard-edge border paintings, success as a painter began to materialize. The famous architect and collector Philip Johnson and the collector Robert Scull each acquired large paintings works, as did the Sheldon Memorial Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1967, Landfield was invited to participate in the Whitney Annual at the end of the year. His work attracted considerable attention, and he was invited to participate in important group exhibitions at the Bykert, Bianchini, and Park Place Galleries in New York. Landfield joined the David Whitney...

Binyamin Basteker The sounds of flowers , 2020 oil on canvas 80 x 60 cm 31 x 24 in Exhibited: "Jerusalem Flowers", 2020 Rosenbach Contemporary, Jerusalem Binyamin Basteker was bo...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...

Large Scale Mid-Century Earth-tone Horizontal Abstract by Joseph Vasica Very large scale (70"H x 160"W) (5.8'H x 13.3'L) mid-century abstract with soft edge, grey and burnt sienna...

Ruz. Vertical. horizontal lines. Interior Landscapes - Abstract Acrylic on canvas . Perfect condition. RUZ, Rafael (Barcelona 1956) While contemplating the painting of Ruz, we are i...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widely recognized for their demanding yet understated means of revealing a serious and sober essence. He identified greatly with Mark Rothko, a friend, as well as Adolph Gottlieb and Jack Tworkov, with whom he had studied privately. Fenton painted in New York City in the late 50's as the explosion of Abstract Expressionism turned into a rebellion against gestural, emotional painting. More concerned about his art than his posture, he expanded upon a tradition in painting with influences as diverse as Whistler and Turner as well as Ad Reinhardt and Joseph Albers. Alan Fenton was born in Cleveland in 1927, studied at the Cleveland School of Art, The Arts Students League, The New School, and at NYU, earning his BFA at Pratt Institute, where he later taught painting for many years. At seventeen, Fenton served in the Merchant Marines where he began a career as a professional boxer, a skill he had honed on the streets. He moved successfully through the graphic design business en route to becoming a painter in New York at the height of the art revolution of the fifties and sixties. Fenton enjoyed success with his subtle washes and pencil drawings as well as large abstract...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: 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...

This sculpture light is a captivating addition to the Art + Light series, where the interplay of light and art creates a unique and fascinating effect. The wooden cube is covered wit...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 96 x 78 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...