David Rankin

Australian Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting

1990

David Rankin American (b. 1946) Untitled (Black on gray) (1990) Gouache and charcoal on paper signed lower left 19 x 15 inches Rankin is a New York-based, British-born Australian post-war and contemporary artist known for his expressionistic abstract paintings. His work can be categorized by his use of quick, loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of scribbles on a page. Rankin works predominantly in oil painting and acrylic on canvas, but also works with paper, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities across the world, including New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Mexico, Vienna, Berlin and Cologne, as well as all over Australia. Represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections and museums, David Rankin’s work is featured in Australia’s leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. David Rankin was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in 1946 then emigrated to Australia with his family in 1948. He spent his childhood in the 1950s in the semi-rural Port Hacking region South of Sydney and his teenage years in country New South Wales, from Hay, Wagga Wagga and Albury in the South to Bourke and Brewarrina in the North. Rankin is self-taught, developing his techniques and ideas in the outback towns of his youth. He was inspired by the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Klee as well as being influenced by the history of Buddhism and Asian art. In his travels before he arrived in Sydney in 1967 he developed a concept of what he wanted to achieve as an Australian artist. His dream was to express the anima, the life spirit or the essence of God in all nature. As an Australian artist he believed could bring the elements of Western Art together with an understanding and love for the cultures of Asia and the Australian Aborigine. He also felt that as Australia was closer to Asia than Europe it made sense to think about the art of Indian, Chinese and Japanese artists, and that one could not be an authentic articulate Australian artist without a love and respect for the artistic and spiritual expressions of the various Aboriginal artists, peoples and cultures. His work combined elements of Abstract Expressionist painting with Jewish and Aboriginal influences. In 1979 his first wife, Jennifer Mary Roberts (née Haynes) died. Rankin subsequently met his current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parents being survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife's death fused into what he calls "the dark blessing of my life." The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted judaica imagery, Black Menorah...

Perez Celis (American, Argentinian 1939-2008) Oil and mixed media on canvas 1993 Latin abstract expressionism oil painting depicting a color block and drip motif Hand signed and dated to lower left. In gilt gold frame. Approximate dimensions: canvas h. 14", w. 21"; frame h. 24", w. 31", d. 2.25". Celis Pérez (1939 – 2008) was an Argentine artist usually referred to as Pérez Celis. He earned international recognition for his paintings, sculptures, murals and engravings. Pérez was born in San Telmo on the South side of Buenos Aires, and grew up in Liniers, on the opposite end of town. Working as a newsboy during childhood, he learned the basics of drawing and painting via correspondence classes. In 1954 he entered the Manuel Belgrano National School of Fine Arts, and under the guidance of teachers like Leopoldo Presas, Santiago Cogorno, and Libero Badii, Pérez Celis developed his interest in abstraction. He first exhibited at age 17, at Galería La Fantasma. Following his entry into the professional arts world, he began using his name in a reversed form. At the start of his career he has been influenced by Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely during a 1957 retrospective of the latter's works at the National Fine Arts Museum. Some of his later works bear the influence of Gerhard Richter. He married Sarah Fernández in 1959 and relocated to Uruguay for less than a year invited by Carlos Páez Vilaró . Took part in the "Group of 8" – proponents of abstract art among the normally conservative local audiences. "Grupo de los 8", was a movement of Latin American, Uruguayan and Argentine artists formed in 1958 together with Oscar García Reino, Miguel Ángel Pareja, Raúl Pavlovsky, Lincoln Presno, Américo Sposito, Alfredo Testoni and Julio Verdie in order to promote new tendencies in painting. In 1960 they were invited by art critic Rafael Squirru to join the international exhibition at the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (of which he was creator and first director) with artists such as Willem de Kooning, Roger Hilton and Lucio Fontana. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1960, and opened a downtown atelier with the support of Guido Di Tella, his first mecena. Pérez Celis explored geometric art, and builds his first mural, Fuerza América, in 1962. Indigenous patterns and colors would reappear in many of his productions during the 1960s and 1970s, and distinguished him from most other local artists, among whom pop art and figurative art was more influential. His work had a more raw, Art Brut , Brutalist feel to it. He was featured in more than 120 solo shows during his career, notably the Galerie Bellechasse, Anita Shapolsky Gallery New York, (he showed with Agustin Fernandez, Rodolfo Abularach, Giancarlo Puppo and Cuban artist Mario Bencomo) Arteconsult, Boston & Panama, Witcomb, etc. and his art was purchased for many private collections and first-rate museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He received commissions from the Argentine government, which placed his works in the Ministro Pistarini International Airport, from other governments, and from prominent individuals and businesses. In 1977, following his wife's passing in an automobile accident he remarried and lived in Caracas, Paris, New York City, and Miami in subsequent years. He shared his time between Buenos Aires and New York in 1994, a retrospective of his work was hosted at Biblioteca Nacional visited by more than 300000 persons. He continued exhibiting in Latin America, in the Sanyo Gallery in Tokyo, the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City, and at numerous universities. Among his numerous recognitions in later years was the Alba Award at the 61st Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas Argentino, and he was proclaimed a Distinguished Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires in 2001. He also created several literary illustrations, notably those for Jorge Luis Borges' Spanish-language translation of Walt Whitman's poem Leaves of Grass. A fan of the Club Atlético Boca Juniors football team, he created two murals in 1997 for the team's La Bombonera Stadium in Buenos Aires: "Idolos" (Idols) and "Mito y Destino" (Myth and Destiny), both Venetian mosaics and bronze sculpture on cement. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, NY Museum of Modern Latin American Art...

This is from her celebrated Drip Series, Titled, "Small Dark Center" Signed and dated verso 1980. Berenice Dvorzon was an extraordinary artist who began as an active young painter d...

Artist: Matt Carone, signed lower right Dated: 1995 Dimensions: 80.25"H x 56.25"L In a fine wooden black and gold gilded frame. Provenance: Freitas Revilla Gallery. Matt Carone (1930-) South Florida artist and gallerist. The Italian- American New Jersey native took up painting in the 1940s after Hans Hoffman asked him to model in a class in which Nicolas Carone, Matt's brother was a student. He has never stopped painting since that seminal experience in Abstract Expressionism. His work reveals a dynamic gestural vocabulary that’s confident, rich in color and texture, and charged with emotion. Matthew Carone opened his famous, influential gallery on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale in 1959, and in the following decades, he built a roster that included such artists as Wolf Kahn, Leon Kroll, Wifredo Lam, and the great Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta. Meanwhile, Carone quietly continued his own work as a painter, urged on by Matta on his many visits to the area. His works range from pure abstract expressionist painting to figurative expressionism to an almost Surrealist calligraphic abstraction. Carone lived with and posed for Hans Hoffman, and was friends with Roberto Matta, Conrad Marca-Relli, Paul Jenkins, Franz Kline and Wolf Kahn. His paintings, according to Palm Beach Post art critic Gary Schwan, “reveal a spontaneity that recalls the automatic writing of the surrealists. The figures radiate motion, tension and sexual heat in contained spatial constructions.” This painting depicts nude figures reminiscent of the nudes in the famous Pablo Picasso painting Demoiselle D'avignon. His later paintings, perhaps closer to Jackson Pollock or Cy Twombly than Matta’s animated stick figures and skeletal machines, step toward the path of patterned abstraction without venturing onto it. Like Pollock, whose lyrical loops carried the private rhythms of an artist enamored of dance, and Twombly, whose staccato, sketchy lines reflect a different temperament, Carone’s inspirations flow directly from a subconscious informed by a lifetime of association with some of the century’s most important artists and their works. Not only is Carone identified with the pioneer generation of Abstract Expressionists, but also critics have seen affinities with Surrealism in his work, as well as development parallel to those of the CoBrA group.” Earlier paintings by Carone, an accomplished musician and violinist, often suggest ensembles of musical instruments, particularly those with strings. Like the drip paintings of Pollock, these works, with their powerful sense of movement and lyrical compositions, sometimes seem like musical passages captured on canvas or paper. SELECT ONE PERSON SHOWS Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL Palazzo Panni Museum, Arco di Trento, Italy Fox-Martin Gallery, Housatonic, MA Lurie Galleries, Boca Raton, FL ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, Coral Gables (Miami), Florida Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky Schramm Galleries, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Granville Galleries, Coral Gables, Florida Coral Ridge Yacht Club, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida The Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Gallery 99, Bay Harbour Island, Florida Mercer University, Macon, Georgia P.N.Y.K. Gallery, Kent, Connecticut Simons Rock College of Bard, Great Barrington, Massachusetts Freites-Revilla Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida GROUP SHOWS Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida Schramm Galleries, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Roko Gallery, New York, New York Loft Gallery, Coral Gables Florida Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida Brandeis Art Festival, Palm Beach, Florida Drawing Exhibition, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Ute Stebich Gallery, Lenox, Massachusetts Florida Pavilion, New York World's Fair, 1965 The Lantern Gallery, Ann Arbor, Michigan The Little Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tampa Bay Art...

"Grey". Oil/Acrylic on Canvas. Signature lower right Image: 39.5" x 39.5". Framed: 41" x 41". Rigoberto Mena Santana (Cuban, born 1961) was born in Artemisia, Havana in 1961, where he currently lives and works. He attended the Instituto Politecnico de Diseno Industrial, La Habana, and continued his studies at San Alejandro Fine Art Academy, Havana. He traveled extensively throughout Europe to study the great masters. Mena has had Solo Exhibitions in China, Germany, Netherlands, Mexico, Cuba, Spain, France, and Holland, and in the U.S. in Miami, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C, and California. Following the inauguration of his exhibition “Hablando en Lenguas”. In 2011, Rigoberto’s work was chosen to be a part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Fine Art in Havana, Cuba. Through the eyes of an abstract expressionist, he draws inspiration from his home’s urban landscapes and the spirit of the people and the city. The start of the Cuban Abstract movement was through a group called Los Once or The eleven. Though Mena was not an original member the influence by this new outlet began to spread ideals that put his own practice into fashion. Rigoberto is considered an important painter of his generation. He is one of the few artists in Cuba who has to have a private art gallery. Mena's private gallery at the Plaza de Armas is adjacent to the neighboring government art gallery. His work has been exhibited in Mexico, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, and Holland. Contemporaneous with the controversial, "La Generacion de los 80s" - The 80s Generation of Contemporary Cuban Art also referred to as New Cuban Art. This new Cuban plastic arts movement, with an expression of conceptual and non specific conscience manifestation, addressed many burning issues of the time and unveiled what these artists felt was the true reality of Cuba. It was more than a moment of artistic inspiration; it was a reflection of critical self-awareness and the new social role of art - the fundamental essence of the movement. They included Rubén Torres...

Rene Couturier lives in the Netherlands and France. Rene Couturier is known for abstract still life, figure and landscape painting. Rene' Couturier is an artist whose works displays...

This large exceptional abstract was painted by American artist Richard Lytle (born 1935). Lytle was born in Albany, New York, studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and the Yale University School of Art, where he received a BFA and MFA. He was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Sixteen Americans exhibition in 1959. He began teaching in 1960 at Yale, which began a forty year career as a teacher, professor, and dean. He has had numerous one-man and group exhibitions, and he received the Augustus Saint...

A splatter paint composition on resin, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock who lived and worked a short drive away from Yektai's studio. However, Yektai makes this abstract expressionist ...

Sergei Inkatov’s original, abstract fine art oil paintings have been exhibited internationally. His expressionistic artworks are vivid and richly textured. Inkatov’s paintings radiat...

A nice abstract oil painting by American artist Donald Hugo Stoltenberg (1927-2016). Stoltenberg was born in Milwaukee, WI, attended public grade school in Chicago, and High School i...

Sound Vibration by Allan Storer is a brightly coloured abstract artwork inspired by the works of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter. Allan Storer is an artist sold wi...

A fine abstract in brown tones by American artist David Lund (b. 1925). David Lund’s illustrious painting career spans over 65 years. Born in New York, the...