Jose Maria de Servin

Mexican Boy with Bird

The sweetness that characterizes the work of Mexican painter Jose Maria de Servin (1917-83) is a melancholy and placid one. While he worked in the most modern of styles, he adapted i...

Framed 29 X 23 Image 18 X 24 The sweetness that characterizes the work of Mexican painter Jose Maria de Servin (1917-83) is a melancholy and placid one. While he worked in the most modern of styles, he adapted it to an anecdotal folk-art approach distinctly his own. When he was an infant, de Servin's family moved with him to Guadalajara. A city of history and culture, Guadalajara had a thriving artistic community with strong connections to Europe. His brothers Antonio and Miguel became artists as well, and in later years they worked collaboratively. As a teenager, de Servin studied at one of Mexico's Schools of Open-Air Painting, free art-teaching institutions sponsored by the government. Later de Servin became a pupil of the painter Chucho Reyes, known for his improvisational watercolor variations on traditional Mexican themes. This interest in imagery particular to Mexico would be of great significance to de Servin. De Servin also studied under the more traditional painter Jose Vizcarra. In the early 1930s de Servin joined the Pintores Jovenes de Jalisco, or Young Painters of Jalisco. An influence of critical importance to de Servin was Pablo Picasso. One of the originators of Cubism, the Spanish painter soon departed from its quasi-scientific and optical basis to create lively and humorous geometrical abstractions. It was this Cubism, personal and decorative, that de Servin adopted. His earliest Cubist works mimic Picasso, while during the second stage of his career, his works become smooth and polished, with an emphasis on gentle surface textures. After these cautious years, however, a rough boldness enters along with dominating colors of earth and sand. Modernists like de Servin were interested in exploring what they considered primitive artmaking styles. The adoption of a native manner and native themes is in keeping with Modernist tenets, as is the use of nontraditional materials. De Servin's portraits of peasants, large-eyed and simply rendered, recall children's drawings. The rough burlap ground contrasts with the playful imagery and delicate range of color. The figures, all children or child-like adults, are all curves and simple shapes arranged harmoniously. De Servin's cubism is free from grotesquerie as it celebrates the simplicity of its subjects. De Servin worked with the social-realist Jose Orozco on several large mural commissions in Guadalajara, including one at the Legislative Palace. While their styles were dissimilar, both made use of Mexican imagery to glorify the common people. A sought-after muralist in his own right, de Servin brought the rich colors and endearing characters of his panels to his larger-scale work. For 15 years, de Servin taught summer art classes at the University of Arizona. His career was marked by many one-man shows, both in North America and Europe. In recent years, his striking style has attracted increased notice from critics and the public. His style is a unique conglomerate of tradition, history, legends, heroes, old customs and folklore. It is a self-standing style, recognizable, cheerful, whimsical and a happy creation. Naïve art is any form of visual art that is created by a person who lacks the formal education and training that a professional artist undergoes (in anatomy, art history, technique, perspective, ways of seeing). Unlike folk art, naïve art does not necessarily evince a distinct cultural context or tradition. Naïve art is recognized, and often imitated, for its childlike simplicity and frankness. Paintings of this kind typically have a flat rendering style with a rudimentary expression of perspective. One particularly influential painter of "naïve art" was Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), a French Post-Impressionist who was discovered by Pablo Picasso. Naïve art is often seen as outsider art that is by someone without formal (or little) training or degree. While this was true before the twentieth century, there are now academies for naïve art. Naïve art is now a fully recognized art genre, represented in art galleries worldwide. Museums devoted to naïve art now exist in Kecskemét, Hungary; Riga, Latvia; Jaen, Spain; Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Vicq France and Paris. "Primitive art" is another term often applied to art by those without formal training, but is historically more often applied to work from certain cultures that have been judged socially or technologically "primitive" by Western academia, such as Native American, sub saharan African or Pacific Island art (see Tribal art). This is distinguished from the self-conscious, "primitive" inspired movement primitivism. Another term related to (but not completely synonymous with) naïve art is folk art. There also exist the terms "naïvism" and "primitivism" which are usually applied to professional painters working in the style of naïve art (like Paul Gauguin, Mikhail Larionov, Paul Klee). At all events, naive art can be regarded as having occupied an "official" position in the annals of twentieth-century art since - at the very latest - the publication of the Der Blaue Reiter, an almanac in 1912. Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who brought out the almanac, presented 6 reproductions of paintings by le Douanier' Rousseau (Henri Rousseau), comparing them with other pictorial examples. However, most experts agree that the year that naive art was "discovered" was 1885, when the painter Paul Signac became aware of the talents of Henri Rousseau and set about organizing exhibitions of his work in a number of prestigious galleries. The Earth Group (Grupa Zemlja) were Croatian artists, architects and intellectuals active in Zagreb from 1929 to 1935. The group included the painters Krsto Hegedušić, Edo Kovačević, Omer Mujadžić, Kamilo Ružička, Ivan Tabaković, and Oton Postružnik, the sculptors Antun Augustinčić, Frano Kršinić, and the architect Drago Ibler. A term applied to Yugoslav (Croatian) naive painters working in or around the village of Hlebine, near the Hungarian border, from about 1930. Some of the best known naive artists are Dragan Gaži, Ivan Generalić, Josip Generalić, Krsto Hegedušić, Mijo Kovačić, Ivan Lacković-Croata, Franjo Mraz, Ivan Večenaj and Mirko Virius. Camille Bombois (1883–1970) Ferdinand Cheval, known as 'le facteur Cheval' (1836–1924) Henry Darger (1892–1973) L. S. Lowry (1887–1976) Grandma Moses, Anna Mary Robertson (1860–1961) Nikifor (1895–1968) Poland, Horace Pippin (1888–1946) Jon Serl (1894-1993) United States Alfred Wallis (1855–1942) Scottie Wilson (1890–1972) Gesner Abelard...

The sweetness that characterizes the work of Mexican painter Jose Maria de Servin (1917-83) is a melancholy and placid one. While he worked in the most modern of styles, he adapted i...

The sweetness that characterizes the work of Mexican painter Jose Maria de Servin (1917-83) is a melancholy and placid one. While he worked in the most modern of styles, he adapted i...

YITSKHOK LIKHTENSHTEYN (ISAAC LICHTENSTEIN) (1888-1981) (Icchok, Izrael) was born in Lodz, Poland. Initially he was studying at Yehuda Pen school in Witebsk. In the same school ...

This is a modernist Judaic painting of a Jewish scene of the Kiddush Levanah prayer. The monthly hebrew blessing on the new moon. It is not dated but I am estimating it to the 1940s...

"El Baile (The Dance)" is an original oil painting on Jute by Ernesto Gutierrez. The artist signed the piece in the lower right. This painting depicts five figures dancing and playin...

"Vendedora de Sombreros" is an original oil painting on jute by Ernesto Gutierrez. The artist signed the piece lower right. It depicts a woman selling hats. 45" x 35" art 55" x 45"...

African American artist Alvin Hollingsworth created an inventive and intriguing close-up portrait with figures in the distance. Found objects such as swatches of burlap, plastic spoons, press type and wood shapes are adhered to the surface make this work an object as much as an image. The overall image is bathed in a super hot orange-yellow. This is Hollingsworth interpretation of the soul of Africa. Indistinctly signed lower right in red. The work makes a powerful statement in person. Provenance: The Artist to a personal friend. Private collection Framed dimensions 19 1/4 x 25 1/4 in. Alvin Carl...

Oil painting on burlap by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) titled "Winter Witches in an Upside World Interfering with Each Other" from 1990. Titled and dated by the artist on verso. Painted in shades of black, gray, red, purple, and green. Presented in the original artist frame, outer dimensions measure 44 ⅛ x 44 ⅛ x 1 ⅜ inches. Image size is 43 x 43 inches. About the artist: Edward Marecak Born Ohio 1919 Died Colorado 1993 Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of “Peter and the Wolf,” awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier oeuvre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s, he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish, foreshadowed the output of his entire Colorado-based career, distinguished by a dramatic use of color, intricacy of execution and attention to detail contributing to their visual impact. He once observed, “Each time I start a new painting I always fool myself by saying this time keep it simple and not get entangled with such complex patterns, color and design; but I always find myself getting more involved with richness, color and subject matter.” An idiosyncratic artist proficient in oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, and casein, he did not draw upon Colorado subject matter for his work, unlike many of his fellow painters in the state. Instead he used Midwest landscape imagery, bringing to life in it witches and spirits adapted from the Slovakian folk tales he heard growing up in Ohio. A number of his paintings depict winter witches derived from the Slovak custom in the Tatra Mountains of burning an effigy of the winter witch in the early spring to banish the memory of a hard winter. The folk tale element imparts a dream-like quality to many of his paintings. A devote of Greek mythology, he placed the figures of Circe, Persephone, Sybil, Hera and others in modern settings. The goddess in Persephone Brings a Pumpkin to her Mother, attired as a Midwestern farmer’s daughter, heralds the advent of fall with the pumpkin before departing to spend the winter season in the underworld. Train to Olympus, the meeting place of the gods in ancient Greece, juxtaposes ancient mythology with modernity creating a combination of whimsy and thought-provoking consideration for the viewer. Voyage to Troy #1 alludes to the ancient city that was the site of the Trojan Wars, but has a contemporary, autobiographical component referencing the harbor of the Aleutian Islands recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. In the 1980s Marecak used the goddess Hera in his painting, Hera Contemplates Aspects of the Art Nouveau, to comment on art movements in the latter half of the twentieth century Marecak’s love of classical music and opera, which he shared with his wife and to which he often listened while painting in his Denver basement studio, is reflected in Homage of Offenbach, an abstract work translating the composer’s musical colors into colorful palette. Pace, Pace, Mio Dio, the title of his earliest surrealist painting, is a soprano aria from Verdi’s opera...

„The Way #4”, mixed media (soil, pearl glue, oil, powder pigment, rosin) on jute, 140 x 170, 2012 Series “The Way” by Marta Pokojowczyk contains mixed media paintings on jute create...

„The Way #6”, mixed media (soil, pearl glue, oil, powder pigment, rosin) on jute, 140 x 150, 2012 Series “The Way” by Marta Pokojowczyk contains mixed media paintings on jute create...