Charles Ragland Bunnell

Golden Cycle Mill, Colorado, 1940s WPA Mining Watercolor Landscape, Black White

circa 1940

Rare WPA era original painting by Colorado/Woodstock modernist, Jenne Magafan (1916-1952). Church in Leadville, 1938 is presented in a custom frame with all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 22 ½ x 28 ¼ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 12 ¼ x 19 inches. Piece is in good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Provenance: Estate of Ethel Magafan Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Jenne and Ethel Magafan were identical twins, born in Chicago to a Greek immigrant father and a Polish mother. Due to health concerns about their father, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Colorado Springs and then in Denver. He was a proud supporter of their artistic ambitions but died suddenly 1932, a heavy blow to both of them. They attended East High School in Denver, where they found a mentor in their art teacher Helen Perry. She had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago but had later abandoned a career as an artist, making her all the more determined to help the Magafan twins succeed artistically. While still in high school, the twins impressed artist Frank Mechau, and Helen Perry paid for their lessons with him. He subsequently invited them to apprentice with him at his Redstone studio. In 1936, Jenne won the Carter Memorial Art Scholarship and shared it with her sister so that they both could attend the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. Once they ran out of money, Mechau, now teaching there, hired them as assistants. Through their involvement at the Academy, the twins entered into careers as muralists, working at first with Mechau and then with Peppino Mangravite. In 1939, Jenne was awarded her first commission for a mural at the Albion, Nebraska Post Office. Eventually she won a total of seven commissions. For the work, she traveled across the country in a station wagon. Her daughter has said of her mother's experience that, "They saved up gas coupons as fuel was rationed and drove cross country on ?retreads'-- refurbished old tires." Federally sponsored murals could stir up excited responses from local citizens. Jenne's favorite mural was Cowboy Dance at the Anson, Texas post office, but the local newspaper took offense to a whiskey jug painted in the lower corner, citing that "Throughout the history of Anson there has never been an open saloon." Meeting the artists Doris Lee and Arnold Blanch in Los Angeles, the twins learned of the art colony in Woodstock, New York, and in 1945 they went to visit. That same year, their work was exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design. Marrying her longtime love, Edward Chavez, Jenne moved to Woodstock along with her sister where, for the first time, the sisters didn't live together. Ethel didn't look favorably upon her brother-in-law's dominating personality and this forced their styles to develop more independently. When Chavez won a Fulbright scholarship, the couple traveled to Italy. During this time, Jenne went to visit her sister in Greece, where Ethel was fulfilling her Fulbright. In 1952, the Magafans and their husbands returned to the States, and less than a week after their return Jenne died in Albany Hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage. ©David Cook Galleries, LLC Awards: State of Colorado Arts and Humanities Award, 1971; Received the first solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum; Honored posthumously by Historic Denver as part of the Colorado 100. Education: Cleveland Schools of Art (B.E.A.); Western Reserve University with Henry Keller; Frank Wilcox, William Joseph Eastman...

"Acoma Pueble (New Mexico) is a gouache on paper painting by Wolfgang Pogzoba (1936-1982) from 1978 of a landscape and an adobe home over a cliff side in the town of Acoma Pueblo, NM. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 22 ⅜ x 25 inches. Image size is 12 x 15 inches. The Acoma Pueblo is located approximately 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Painting is clean and in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Wolfgang Pogzeba...

"Artists Sketching (California)" is an American Modernist scene of three artists working with mountains in the background. Gouache on paper, signed, titled, and dated by the artist in the lower margin. Housed in a custom frame with all archival materials measuring 25.5 x 37.5 x 1.5 inches; image dimensions measure 20.25 x 29.75 inches. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Frederick Shane About the artist: Painter and printmaker, Missouri regionalist Frederick E. Shane specialized in genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes and portraits executed in a variety of media: oil, watercolor, mixed media, gouache, tempera and lithography. Fundamentally a realist, his work also contains some abstraction, expressionism and surrealism used in treating his subject matter. In the summers of 1925-26 Shane studied with Randall Davey at the recently-founded Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs. The Academy was established in 1919 by Spencer and Julie Penrose, prominent philanthropists and art patrons, who donated their family residence for the creation of a local art institution. In the 1940s and early 1950s Shane maintained his contact with Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (the successor institution to the Broadmoor Academy in 1936). He participated in a number of its annual Artists West of the Mississippi exhibitions and also became a close friend of Boardman Robinson, the Center’s director, and visiting artist Adolph Dehn...

"In Soquel (California)" is an original oil on board painting by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987) circa 1955. Farm landscape with figure hanging laundry and silo, painted in colors of blue...

Vintage 1930s - 1940s oil painting of an adobe church in New Mexico with a brilliant blue sky and clouds (likely Rancho de Taos), circa 1940. Painted by Denver modernist, Paul K...

Original framed oil painting on burlap by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) titled "Autumn Harvest" from 1987. Signed and dated by the artist in the lower right corner. Presented in a custom framed, outer dimensions measure 20 x 29 x 1 ⅜ inches. Image size is 19 x 28 inches. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Edward Marecak Painting is clean and in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the artist: 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...

Stunning New York City urban modernist watercolor titled "Summer Afternoon Stroll" by Society of Six artist Bernard Von Eichman (American, 1899-1990), 1...

Playful abstracted watercolor of a beach scene by Irene Pattinson (American, 1909-1999). Signed and dated "Irene Pattinson 1959" in the lower right corner. Presented in a new French ...

Donald Stacy "Figure in Shadow" c.1950s Gouache paint on paper 24" x 18" unframed Unsigned Came from artist's estate Donald Stacy (1925-2011) New Jersey Studied: Newark School of Fine Art The Art Students League Pratt Graphic Arts Center University of Paris 1953-54 University of Aix-en-Provence 1954-55 Faculty: Art Department of the New School Museum of Modern Art School of Visual Arts Stacy Studio Workshop Exhibitions: Grand Central Moderns George Wittenborn The New School Print Exhibitions, Chicago University of Oklahoma Honolulu Museum Monclair Museum Wisconsin State College Louisiana Art...

Clara Deike (American, 1881-1964) Hillside and Stream, 1916 Gouache on paper Signed and dated lower right 22 x 18 inches 25.5 x 21.5 inches, framed A graduate of the Cleveland Schoo...

Study for "The Glorious Flight - Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot"; 1983; Gouache on Illustration Board; 14.5" x 13.75"; Signed Lower Right; Unframed. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alice Rose[1] Provensen (née Twitchell; August 14, 1918[2] – April 23, 2018[3]) and Martin Provensen...

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) This came with a small grouping from the artist's family, some were hand signed some were not. These were studies for larger paintings. Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. Simka painted what he thought was typical of Jackson. His impression of pre-civil rights Mississippi was evidently Greek Revival column houses, weeping willow trees, working class families, and the oppression of African Americans. He painted African American men picking cotton, while a white man took account of the harvest and a white judge advised a white family, calling it Pursuits of Life in Mississippi. Though clearly endorsed by the government and initially generally well-received, the mural soon raised concerns with locals as the climate toward racial segregation began to change. The main concern was whether depictions that show African Americans in subjugated societal roles should be featured in a courtroom. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...