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Art For Sale
Period: 20th Century
Period: 1970s
Period: 1960s
Period: 1980s
Period: 1940s
+ 2 more
Sérigraphie no. 10 - Original Screenprint, Handsigned & 27 / 75 (BNF #102)
Located in Paris, IDF
Pierre SOULAGES (1919-2022) Serigraph n°10, 1979 Original serigraph Signed in pencil Numbered 27/75 copies On Arches vellum 52 x 37 cm (c. 21 x 15 in) REFERENCE: Catalogue raisonné of the original prints of Pierre Soulages, BNF #102 INFORMATION: This serigraph is part of the series "On the wall opposite", published by Bernard Frize...
Category

1970s Abstract Art

Materials

Screen

Miniature Landscape Called Birch Trees Reflected in a Stream by Oskar Bergman
Located in Stockholm, SE
We are delighted to present this rare miniature landscape by the artist Oskar Bergman. Measuring just 5.5 x 4 cm, this exquisite piece comes with its original frame and gold passepar...
Category

Early 20th Century Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Ingrid with Hat
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This is a rare and iconic poster from the first printing created by the legendary Andy Warhol for a special exhibition held in Sweden in 1983. Designed as a tribute to the legendary ...
Category

Late 20th Century Pop Art Art

Materials

Offset

Tiny Houses in Provence - Original Lithograph (Gourdon workshop)
Located in Paris, IDF
Pierre AMBROGIANI (1907-1985) Tiny Houses in Provence, 1974 Original Lithograph (Gourdon Workshop) Signed with the artist's stamp On vellum 38 x 28 cm (c. 14.9 x 11 in) Excellent c...
Category

Mid-20th Century Fauvist Art

Materials

Lithograph

Flower Still Life
By Adrian Dornbush
Located in Los Angeles, CA
(Note: This work is part of our exhibition Connected by Creativity: WPA Era Works from the Collection of Leata and Edward Beatty Rowan) Oil on canvas, 24 ½ x 19 ½ inches unframed, 32 x 27 inches framed, signed and inscribed “Adrian Dornbush/ Flower Still Life” verso, a remnant of exhibition label verso, stamped “1454” verso, original frame Exhibited: i) Midwestern Artist’s Exhibition Representative Work from Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska & Colorado, Kansas City Art Institute, February 1 to March 2, 1931, no. 34 (see catalog with a listing of work with this title); and ii) Special Display and Sale of Late Oil Paintings Produced by Cedar Rapids Own Artists from the Little Gallery, at Newman’s Department Store, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 1932 (see [Advertisement], The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), March 15, 1932 – listing a work with this title, together with paintings by fourteen other artists, including Grant Wood, Marvin Cone...
Category

1930s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

Georgia O'Keeffe-MoMA 1997 published-hardwood silver gilded frame included
Located in London, GB
-In light of new tariffs, we’ve applied a 20% discount off the market price of this piece to support our collectors in facing potential added costs. At the gallery, we work closely w...
Category

1990s Abstract Art

Materials

Wood, Adhesive, Archival Ink, Giclée

'Archway' — American Modernism, WPA
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Leon Bibel, 'Archway', color serigraph, 1939, edition 25. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered ' /25' in pencil. A rich, painterly impression, with fresh colors, on buff wove paper; ...
Category

1930s American Modern Art

Materials

Screen

Black & White Abstract Geometrical Oil Painting, Late 20th Century Ohio Artist
Located in Beachwood, OH
James Massena March (American, 1953-2021) Untitled Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches 31 x 31 inches, framed "My paintings are about space, form and energy. I generally start painting wit...
Category

Late 20th Century Abstract Art

Materials

Oil

Maternity and Centaur
Located in OPOLE, PL
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - Maternity and Centaur Original Lithograph from 1957. Dimensions of work: 23 x 20 cm. Publisher: Maeght Éditeur, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition.
Category

1950s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Picasso, Composition (Cramer 148), Le Goût du Bonheur (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph and silkscreen with grease crayon, lithographic tusche, lead pencil, charcoal on vélin d'Arches paper. Paper size: 12.8 x 9.84 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered...
Category

1970s Cubist Art

Materials

Lithograph

Casanova : Aphrodisiac Oyster - Original etching (Field #67-4 J)
Located in Paris, IDF
Salvador DALI (1904-1969) Casanova : Aphrodisiac Oyster, 1967 Original etching Signed in the plate On vellum Rives 38 x 28 cm (c. 14.9 x 11 inch) REFERENCES : - Catalog raisonné Fi...
Category

1960s Surrealist Art

Materials

Etching

Hairdresser — vintage drawing, original 'Superman' artist
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Leonard Nowak, 'Hairdresser', conté crayon and India ink, c. 1940s. Signed in ink, lower left. Original cartoon drawing, on textured, off-white wove draw...
Category

1940s Modern Art

Materials

Conté, India Ink

1930's French Impressionist Red Roof Top Village In Green Fields Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
French Landscape by Louise Alix, French 1950's Impressionist oil on artist paper, unframed painting: 16 x 12.5 inches provenance: from a large private collection of this artists wor...
Category

Mid-20th Century Impressionist Art

Materials

Oil

Mid Century Chevaux et Cavalières La Nuit Lithograph
Located in Soquel, CA
Mid Century Nocturnal Horses with Riders Under Moonlight Lithograph Limited Edition Compelling nocturnal lithograph of two women on horseback by ...
Category

1960s Abstract Impressionist Art

Materials

Paper, Lithograph

“The artists Mother 1631”
Located in Warren, NJ
Rembrandt - Etching - Artist's Mother with her Hand on her Chest: Small Bust . In good condition measures 22x21
Category

20th Century Art

Materials

Etching

Huerta (Thrauco painting)
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Carlos Ortuzar (Chilean, 1932-1985). Estaban Milla es Salvado de las Garras del Huecupor su Companero Lorenzo Huerta, ca. 1964. Oil on paper mounted to cradled masonite panel, 22 x 28.75 inches. Titled lower edge. Unsigned. Some loss of paint on the highest areas of protrusion. Corners show heavy wear will loss of paper ground. Provenance: Doyle Auctions; Couturier Gallery, Stamford CT. Carlos Ortúzar Worthington was born on March 17, 1935 in Santiago, Chile. He studied theater, law and philosophy. He entered the School of Fine Arts of the University of Chile in 1956, where he had as teachers Gustavo Carrasco, Marta Colvin...
Category

Mid-20th Century Surrealist Art

Materials

Paper, Oil

(after) Amedeo Modigliani "Buste de jeune femme"
By Amedeo Modigliani
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: collotype (after the painting). Printed in 1926 at the Leon Marotte atelier and published in an edition of 1000 by Editions des Quatre Chemins. Image size: 7 3/4 x 5 7/8 inch...
Category

1920s Art

Materials

Photogravure

Femme nue
Located in OPOLE, PL
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Femme nue Lithograph, pochoir from 1962. An unnumbered copy from a limited edition of 262. Dimensions of work: 48.5 x 36 cm Publisher: Leda, Éditions ...
Category

1960s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Beaton, Audrey Hepburn, Cecil Beaton, Electa Editrice Portfolios (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Héliogravure on vélin paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Cecil Beaton, Electa Editrice Portfolios, 1981. Published and pri...
Category

1980s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

French 20th Century Vibrant Abstract Swirls of Orange, Yellow Green and Blue
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Abstract Expressionist Composition by Gilbert Pelissier (French born 1924) signed oil painting on canvas, unframed dated 93 canvas size: 22 x 18 inches condition: overall very good, ...
Category

Late 20th Century Abstract Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Picasso, Composition (Cramer 148), Le Goût du Bonheur (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph and silkscreen with grease crayon, lithographic tusche, lead pencil, charcoal on vélin d'Arches paper. Paper size: 12.8 x 9.84 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered...
Category

1970s Cubist Art

Materials

Lithograph

Dufy, Notre maison de Montsaunès, Vacances forcées (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph on papier bouffant des Papeteries de Casteljoux paper Year: 1970 Paper Size: 12 x 9.25 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio...
Category

1970s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Home David Hockney (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) Clandeboye House
Located in New York, NY
From David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio, an image from the story of ‘The boy who left home to learn fear’. Hockney chose this story for its ...
Category

1960s Modern Art

Materials

Etching, Aquatint

Orientalist North African Figures Market Stall City Scene large Oil Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Market Stall Conversation French School, 20th century oil on canvas, unframed canvas : 24 x 20 inches provenance: private collection, France condition: sound condition but with consi...
Category

Mid-20th Century French School Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Don Quichote
Located in OPOLE, PL
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Don Quichote Lithograph with quadrochromy from 1961. Dimensions of sheet: 37.9 x 27 cm Dimensions in frame: 53.2 x 43.2 cm Publisher: Éditions Cercle ...
Category

1960s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Two Elms, Modern Etching by Linda Plotkin
Located in Long Island City, NY
Linda Plotkin, American (1938 - ) - Two Elms, Year: circa 1965, Medium: Etching on Arches, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, Edition: 6/120, Image Size: 22 x 18 inches, Size...
Category

1960s Modern Art

Materials

Etching

Untitled (Two Birds) - Etching by Max Ernst - 1972
Located in Roma, IT
Etching and aquatint on Japan paper, realized in 1972. Printed and published by Georges Visat, Paris. Edition of 100, numbered 99/100 and hand signed in pencil.
Category

1970s Surrealist Art

Materials

Etching

The Hugh O'Neill Building, 655-671 Sixth Avenue, NYC, lithograph Signed/N Framed
Located in New York, NY
Richard Haas The Hugh O'Neill Building, 655-671 Sixth Avenue, New York City, 1974 Lithograph on Arches paper Signed, titled and annotated "TP" in graphite pencil on the front Edition...
Category

1970s Realist Art

Materials

Lithograph

The Taste of Happiness, Planche XV
Located in OPOLE, PL
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - The Taste of Happiness, Planche XV Lithograph from 1970. An unsigned and unnumbered edition of 666. Dimensions of sheet: 32.5 x 25 cm Dimensions in fr...
Category

1970s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Rolling Stones Tin Pan Alley Colour LIFETIME silver gelatine print
Located in Norwich, GB
Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers, with work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. From presidents to pop stars, he ...
Category

20th Century Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper

wood engraving for Mille Nuits
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: wood engraving (after the watercolor). Printed in Paris in 1955 at the atelier Coulouma for "Mille nuits et une nuit" (1001 Nights) which was the last major portfolio by Kees...
Category

1950s Art

Materials

Engraving, Woodcut

Dutch Bridge & Canal Amsterdam Back Streets Framed Oil Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Dutch Canal Dutch artist, inscribed to label oil on board, framed Framed: 16 x 13.75 inches Board: 9.5 x 7.5 inches Provenance: Private collection, Scotland This charming painting b...
Category

20th Century Impressionist Art

Materials

Oil

Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics - by Cy Twombly - 1984
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled, Sarayevo Winter Olympic Games 1984, is an etching with aquatint and lithograph in colors realized by Cy Twombly on the occasion of the Winter Olympics Games 1984 in Sarajev...
Category

1980s Contemporary Art

Materials

Etching, Aquatint, Lithograph

Margaret Nicholson - A Mid 20th Century Scottish Oil Painting PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Located in Cirencester, GB
ARTIST: Margaret Dorothy Nicholson (1886-1972) British TITLE: "Portrait Of A Lady Steering A Boat" SIGNED: unsigned MEDIUM: oil on board SIZE: 57cm x 47cm inc frame CONDITION: ver...
Category

Mid-20th Century Post-Impressionist Art

Materials

Oil

Orange and Blue Vibrant Swirl Abstract French 20th Century Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Abstract Expressionist Composition signed by Gilbert Pelissier (French born 1924) oil painting on canvas, unframed canvas size: 20 x 20 inches condition: overall very good, a few min...
Category

Late 20th Century Abstract Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sandias, Surrealist Mixographia by Rufino Tamayo
Located in Long Island City, NY
Rufino Tamayo, Mexican (1899 - 1991) - Sandias, Year: 1977, Medium: Mixographia, signed and numbered in crayon, Edition: 31/100, Size: 29 x 20.75 in. (73.66 x 52.71 cm), Publishe...
Category

1970s Surrealist Art

Materials

Etching

Tree - Lithograph Signed in the Plate - Mourlot 1965
Located in Paris, IDF
Henri Matisse Tree Lithograph in colors (printed in Atelier Mourlot) Signed in the plate Edition of 250 copies On Arches vellum 38 x 28 cm (c. 15 x 11 in) Very good condition INFO...
Category

1960s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Pool At Lake Tahoe Slim Aarons Estate Stamped Print
Located in London, GB
Pool At Lake Tahoe 1959 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Bathers by a pool on the shore of Lake Tahoe, California, 1959. unframed c type print printed 2023 20 x ...
Category

1950s Modern Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Roy Lichtenstein M...Maybe-Serigraph Pop Art Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
First edition printing of Roy Lichtenstein's poster titled "M...Maybe, 1965" printed in Tel Aviv, Israel. Serigraph measures 54 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches and it is unsigned and unnumbered....
Category

1970s Pop Art Art

Materials

Screen

Advice from a Caterpillar (Field 69-5, A-M), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Héliogravure on Papeterie de Mandeure vélin paper. Paper Size: 16.93 x 11.22 inches. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Catalogue raisonné references: Dalí, ...
Category

1970s Surrealist Art

Materials

Lithograph

"A Small Beach" original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. Printed in Paris in 1968 by the Mourlot Freres atelier. Size: 12 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches (313 x 235 mm). Not signed.
Category

1960s Art

Materials

Lithograph

Bullfighting Scene oil on canvas painting
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Title: Bullfighting Scene Artist: José María Tuser Vázquez (1919-1986) Technique: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 16.1 x 13 inches (unframed) Date: c. 1950-1960 Condition: Good Provenance:...
Category

1960s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

King Charles 1st Antique Oil Painting Portrait of Famous British Monarch
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
King Charles I British artist, early 20th century signed with initials oil on canvas, framed framed: 36 x 29 inches canvas: 32 x 26 inches provenance: p...
Category

Early 1900s Old Masters Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Miró, Composition (Cramer 83; Mourlot 347), Derrière le miroir (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Derrière le miroir, N° 139-140, 1963. Published by Aimé Maeght, Éd...
Category

1960s Surrealist Art

Materials

Lithograph

Pink Peonies In Glass Vase Still Life 20th Century French Oil Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Gladiolus Still Life by Annie Faure (French 1940-2021) signed lower corner oil painting on canvas, unframed canvas size: 32 x 25.5 inches condition: overall very good, minor surface ...
Category

Late 20th Century French School Art

Materials

Oil

Birch Trees and Snow-Laden Spruces, 1927
Located in Stockholm, SE
We are pleased to offer an exquisite painting by Finnish artist Reino Partanen (1889–1972), titled Birch Trees and Snow-Laden Spruces. Created in 1927, this impressive work measures ...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

“Highly decorative harbor scene”
Located in Warren, NJ
Morgan original oil painting on canvas highly decorative. In good condition painting measures 37x33
Category

20th Century Art

Materials

Oil

Meandering Print Series
Located in Greenwich, CT
A sophisticated and marvelous work for any forward interior. It both gives a sense of space, calm, playfulness and it actually pulls you in as a focal point work of art. Framing is ...
Category

1970s Abstract Art

Materials

Screen

Picasso, Composition (Orozco 207-261), Vingt-Neuf Portraits Imaginaires (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Signed in the plate, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Picasso, Vingt-Neuf Portraits Imaginaires, 1969. Published by Éditions Cerc...
Category

1960s Cubist Art

Materials

Lithograph

French Modernist Gouache Painting Multicolor Scene Man Playing Piano
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
by Paul-Louis Bolot (French 1918-2003) signed original gouache painting on thick paper/ card unframed condition: very good and sound; the edges have a few curls and scuffs/ edge tear...
Category

20th Century Modern Art

Materials

Gouache

Henri Matisse 'Editions du Desastre' 1992- Poster
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Paper Size: 31.5 x 23.5 inches ( 80.01 x 59.69 cm ) Image Size: 31.5 x 23.5 inches ( 80.01 x 59.69 cm ) Framed: No Condition: B: Very Good Condition, with signs of handling or age...
Category

1990s Art

Materials

Offset

original lithograph
Located in Henderson, NV
Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph was printed in 1955 for the "Improvisations" portfolio, and published by the Artists Equity Association of New York in an edition of 2000...
Category

1950s Art

Materials

Lithograph

Woman posing mixed media painting
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Jordi Curós Ventura (1930-2007) - Woman Mixed technique on canvas cardboard. Work measurements 35x27 cm. Frame 40x32 cm. Jordi Curós Ventura (Olot, Girona, March 4, 1930) is a Spani...
Category

1970s Fauvist Art

Materials

Mixed Media

Henri Matisse 'Nu Assis I' Serigraph
Located in Brooklyn, NY
"Nu Assis I" is a large serigraph reproduction by Henri Matisse, utilizing his renowned cut-out technique. Released by Silvio Zamorani Editore in Italy, this print has the approval o...
Category

1980s Modern Art

Materials

Screen

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number
Located in Santa Fe, NM
Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

Nature Morte country side farming scene
Located in Belgrade, MT
This lithograph is part of my private collection. It is original and pencil signed and numbered by the artist.
Category

20th Century Abstract Expressionist Art

Materials

Engraving, Lithograph

Barcelona and Its People oil painting Spain
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Title: Barcelona and Its People Artist: Josep Maria Martínez Lozano (1923–2006) Year: 1979 Technique: Oil on canvas mounted on board Dimensions: 29.13 x 21.65 in Condition: Unfr...
Category

1970s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Fontana, Composition, XXe Siècle (after)
Located in Auburn Hills, MI
Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, XXe Siècle, vol. n°12, 1959. Published and printed under the direct...
Category

1950s Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph, Stencil

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