Oil Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Simon Samsonian (1912 - 2003) Colorful Geometric Abstraction, 1981 Oil on paper 16 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Estate of the artist This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told. Art historians are finally beginning to realize that the power of abstraction in its early years was a zeitgeist not limited to the major European centers of the avant-garde — Paris, Munich, and Moscow — but one that quickly rippled to major cities throughout the world. Within a few decades that original shock of a new vision had inspired thousands of artists from different cultures — particularly those the Middle East — whose translations were not slavish imitations of works by seminal figures like Picasso, Braque, Malevich, and Kandinsky but creative variants colored by their respective cultures. This essay focuses on an extraordinary Armenian artist, his harrowing survival of the genocide, his rise to fame in Cairo, and his creation of a unique style of abstraction. Art historians have typically formed a chorus that teaches the history of abstraction like this: Just before and during the World War I era, several avant-garde artists emerged to create shockingly different new forms by which artists could express themselves. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke out with cubism, quickly followed by Mondrian. In Moscow, Malevich created Suprematism, the ultimate hard-edge geometric abstraction. And in Munich, Kandinsky emerged as the father of Abstract Expressionism. Within these few short years a zeitgeist was sensed throughout the art world. American pioneers, too — particularly Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell — felt this explosive freedom of expression. When Europe was recovering after World War I it became clear that Paris would retain its title as capitol of the art world, lasting through the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depression. But the end of World War II changed everything. A parallel war had been won by a group of irascible young Abstract Expressionists in New York — led by Pollock, Rothko, DeKooning, and Kline. No sooner had Paris been liberated from the Germans than Picasso, Matisse, Breton, and Duchamp surrendered to the Americans. From that point on New York would be the epicenter of the art world. But a lens that focuses myopically on the war between the avant-garde of Paris and New York misses the wider narrative of multiple aesthetic modernities that developed in the several decades following World War I. For Armenian artists the matter is even more complex owing to the genocide of 1915 where more than 1.5 million people — seventy-five percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — were massacred. Those not shot on the spot were sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped and forced to walk naked under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. As a child Samsonian witnessed the murder of his parents and most of the members of his family. Soon thereafter, his older sister, Anahid, quickly shepherded him into a line of children being rescued by Greek nuns. But they became separated and he lost her, too. He was sent to a Greek orphanage in Smyrna (now Izmir), on Turkey’s west coast. Because he only knew his first name, the orphanage gave him a last name based on the place where they found him — Samsun — a major port on Turkey’s north coast on the Black Sea. His birth date was unknown, too. According to Samsonian’s vague recollections he assumed he was about three or four years old at the onset of the genocide, which would place his birth year in 1911 or 1912. In 1922, when Samsonian was about 10, the Turks ended their war with the Greeks by putting Smyrna to the torch in what has been called the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” Once again, the child was on the run, escaping the fire and slaughter. He found temporary refuge in Constantinople, but within a year that major port would fall to the Turks, too, and become renamed as Istanbul. This time, Samsonian was whisked away to an orphanage in Greece founded by the American charity, Near East Relief — which is credited with saving so many Armenian orphans that the American historian Howard M. Sachar said it “quite literally kept an entire nation alive. Any understanding of Samsonian’s approach to modernism requires careful consideration of the impact of his early years because his art is inseparable from the anguish he experienced. In 1927, when he was a teenager, he was transferred to Cairo, Egypt, then a cosmopolitan city hosting a sizable portion of the Armenian diaspora. There he lived with thirty-two other children on the top floor of the Kalousdian Armenian School. Upon graduating in 1932 he won a scholarship to attend the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute — an Italian art school in Cairo — where he won first prize in final examinations among one hundred students. He found work with an Armenian lithographic printer and he returned to the Kalousdian Armenian School to teach drawing. In 1939 he married one of his students, Lucy Guendimian. The Cairo in which Samsonian matured as an artist was home to many prominent art collectors after World War I. In this receptive environment Samsonian exhibited widely and won many awards. Beginning in 1937 and for the next thirty years he exhibited annually at the prestigious Le Salon du Caire hosted by the Société les Amis de l’Art (founded in 1921). After World War II he hit his stride as a modernist in Cairo, counting among his peers other artists of the Armenian diaspora such as Onnig Avedissian, Achod Zorian, Gregoire Meguerdichian, Hagop Hagopian...

This artwork makes part of my series dedicated to the scenes of a summer period. This floral painting called "Sweet memories" is done in an expressive impressionist style. Floral ...

I have worked on a new series of small oil paintings. This is the one of them. This series is dedicated to the scenes of a summer period. This painting is called "Colorful profusion...

Emily Mason So Slight a Film (from the Lehman Brothers art collection), 1978 Oil on paper Abstract Expressionist painting Signed and dated 'Emily Mason '78' bottom right in pencil Fr...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on board unframed: 11.75 x 15 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have fo...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 9.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10.75 x 8.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 9.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ...

This artwork makes part of my series dedicated to the scenes of a summer period. This floral painting called "Sweet memories" is done in an expressive impressionist style. Floral ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on thick board unframed: 8 x 8 inches condition: excellent provenanc...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 19 x 15.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we hav...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

This experimental painting entitled “Faster! Faster!” by Chicago artist Patrick Fitzgerald continues his series of abstract “track paintings,” initially born as the imagined racetrac...

I have worked on a new series of small oil paintings. This is the one of them. This series is dedicated to the scenes of a summer period. This painting is called "Colorful profusion...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10.75 x 8.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Oil on canvas Xia Fu-Ning is a Chinese artist born in 1962 in Nanjing. He was a professor in the Department of Fine Arts during the 1980s at Tianjin Polytechnic University. He curre...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 9.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ...

Dear art lover, I have worked on a new series of small oil paintings dedicated to a summer period. This artwork called "Just a lemon" is done with oil ...

'Untitled' abstract composition, mixed media on soft board, Japanese ink, oil, pencil and gouache by Erez Yardeni (2018). Beautifully balanced, stunningly...

This framed 42" x 34" landscape painting by Mark Gilmore features a rural scene of a hillside field and an emerging tornado hidden behind a moving rainsto...

This contemporary abstract impressionist painting with touches of expressionism, "The French Coast" is a delicate and emotive creation by French artist Natalya Mougenot. Part of a su...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on thick board unframed: 8 x 8 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have fo...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

'Midcentury Biomorphic Abstract', NYMoMA, Paris, XXXII Venice Biennale, MALI, Lima, Peru Signed, lower right, 'E.R. Larrain' for Emilio Rodríguez Larraín (Peruvian, 1928-2015), and inscribed 'Roma, Nov 1963, Enero 1964'. (Rome, Nov 1963-January 1964). Verso titled, "L'Homme C'est Sujet à Errer" (Man Tends to Wander), and bearing the artist's self-portrait in india ink and wash. Exhibited: XXXII Venice Biennale, 1964. (original exhibition label verso) Previously with Staempfli Galleries, New York. This painting is registered in the Archives of American Art as 'Staempfli Gallery, inventory #775'. A monumental and historically distinguished work by this groundbreaking Peruvian Modernist who drew inspiration from Peruvian indigenous and pre-colonial culture. The paintings of Emilio Rodríguez Larraín are held in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including the Musée de la Ville de Paris, Peru's Museo de Arte de Lima and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This painting was selected by the Peruvian Government for exhibition at the XXXII Venice Biennale in 1964 and is the largest single recorded work by the artist. Emilio Rodríguez Larraín received his Bachelors of Architecture in 1949 from Peru's Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería and held his first solo exhibition in Lima after visiting Europe in 1950. In 1951, he returned to Europe in the company of the artists Alfredo Ruiz Rosas and Joaquín Roca Rey...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 8.5 x 5.75inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we hav...

"Workstation 17", 2023 (Gestural Abstract Oil Painting on Canvas Paper) by Jenny Nelson 24 x 18 inches The abstract painter Jenny Nelson is a master at communicating story through...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10 x 6.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 9.5 x 9.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we hav...

Interior design paintings. The diptych were done with oil, gold leaf pen 18 kt in green and gold color on watercolor paper 300g. The works are 11 by 14 inches in size, framed (gold o...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10.75 x 8.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 14.75 x 11 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 14 x 7.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we hav...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 8.25 x 7.25 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on board unframed: 7.75 x 7.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have fo...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 8.5 x 5.75inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we hav...

'Untitled II' abstract composition, mixed media on soft board, Japanese ink, oil, pencil and gouache by Erez Yardeni (2018). There is so much energy in th...

Dear art lover, I have worked on a new series of small oil paintings. This is the one of them. This series is dedicated to the scenes of everyday life. This painting is called "Re...

The Third Script 45 (Abstract painting) Oil on paper — Unframed Informed by a variety of different cultures, Ostovany feels a connection to multiple separate and yet complementary m...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 9.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ha...

Dora Maar Abstract composition Oil on paper 21 x 29.5 cm (31,2 x 39,3 cm with frame) Signed lower right Stamp of the sale of his estate (1998) lower right

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10 x 10 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 9.75 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.5 x 7.15 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

I have worked on a new series of small oil paintings. This is the one of them. This series is dedicated to a summer period. This artwork with figs in a bowl is called "Summer figs f...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 12.75 x 10 inches condition: excellent prov...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 11 x 7.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have...

Hans Hofmann Untitled, circa 1943 Signed lower right Oil and watercolor on paper 22 1/4 x 30 3/4 inches The only artist of the New York school to participate directly in European m...

This framed 26.5" x 31" oil painting by an unknown French constructivist artist uses a dynamic palette of bright colors in a geometric abstraction to create an industrial assemblage ...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on thick board unframed: 8 x 8 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have fo...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 14.75 x 11 inches condition: excellent prov...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10.75 x 8.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Larry Zox Dexter's Choice, State II, ca. 1990 Mixed media, Watercolor pochoir, and Oil stick Wax, Water-Based Crayons, on heavy Arches museum watercolor rag paper with deckled edges 40 × 60 in 101.6 × 152.4 cm Edition 8/30 (unique variant) Frame included Measurements: Sheet: 40 inches (vertical) by 60 inches (horizontal) Frame: 42 inches x 62 inches x 1 inch Dexter's Choice, State # II is a unique, mixed media work from an edition of 30 unique variants done in pochoir, (25 stencils, 14 colors). Here, Zox uses watercolor instead of inks, which is applied to heavy 300 lb. watercolor paper. Although it is a multiple signed and numbered from the edition of 30, each work of art is unique because of how the paper receives the watercolor brush. In addition, this work is created like a mixed media painting because it has 11 lines added by hand with wax and water based crayons and oil sticks. The unique watercolor technique that Zox employed in making "Dexter's Choice" is documented in the textbook, "Screen Printing: Water Based Techniques,Roni Henning, NYIT ". Dexter's Choice was published by Images Gallery, and this work was acquired directly from the publisher before they sold out. This work is elegantly floated and framed in a white wood frame. Accompanied by gallery issued Certificate of Guarantee Larry Zox Biography: A PAINTER who played an essential role in the Color Field discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, Larry Zox is best known for his intensely and brilliantly colored geometric abstractions that question and violate symmetry.1 Zox stated in 1965: “Being contrary is the only way I can get at anything.” To Zox, this position was not necessarily arbitrary, but instead meant “responding to something in an examination of it [such as] using
a mechanical format with X number of possibilities.”2 What he sought was to “get at the specific character and quality of each painting in and for itself,” as James Monte stated in his introductory essay in the catalogue for Zox’s 1973–1974 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.3 Zox’s robust paintings reveal
a celebrated artist and master of composition who is explored and challenged the possibilities of Post-Painterly Abstraction and Minimalist pictorial conventions. Zox began to receive attention in the 1960s when he was included in several groundbreaking exhibitions of Color Field and Minimalist art, including Shape and Structure (1965), organized by Henry Geldzahler and Frank Stella for Tibor de Nagy, New York, and Systemic Painting (1966), organized by Lawrence Alloway for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 1973–1974, the Whitney’s solo exhibition of Zox’s work gave recognition to his significance in the art scene of the preceding decade. In the following year, he was represented in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Wahsington, DC, which acquired fourteen of his works.
 Zox was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1937. He attended the University of Oklahoma and Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, and then studied under George Grosz at the Des Moines Art Center. In 1958, Zox moved to New York, joining the downtown art scene. His studio on 20th Street became a gathering place for artists, jazz musicians, bikers, and boxers, and he occasionally sparred with visiting fighters. He later established a studio in East Hampton, a former black smithy used previously by Jackson Pollock. In his earliest works, such as Banner (1962) Zox created
collages consisting of pieces of painted paper stapled onto sheets of plywood. He then produced paintings that were illusions of collages, including both torn- and trued-edged forms, to which he added a wide range of strong hues that created ambiguous surfaces. In paintings such as For Jean (1963), he omitted the collage aspect of his work and applied flat color areas to create more complete statements of pure color and shape. He then replaced these torn and expressive edges with clean and impersonal lines that would define his work for the next decade. From 1962 to 1965, he produced his Rotation series, at first creating plywood and Plexiglas reliefs, which turned squares into dynamic polygons. He used these shapes in his paintings as well, employing white as a foil between colors to produce negative spaces that suggest that the colored shapes had only been cut out and laid down instead of painted. The New York Times in 1964 wrote of the works in show such as Rotation B (1964) and of the artist: “The artist is hip, cool, adventurous, not content to stay with the mere exercise of sensibility that one sees in smaller works.”4 In 1965, he began the Scissor Jack series, in which he arranged opposing triangular shapes with inverted Vs of bare canvas at their centers that threaten to split their compositions apart. In several works from this series, Zox was inspired by ancient Chinese water vessels. With a mathematical precision and a poetic license, Zox flattened the three dimensional object onto graph paper, and later translated his interpretation of the vessel’s lines onto canvas with masking tape, forming the structure of the painting. The Diamond Cut and Diamond Drill paintings...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 13 x 10 inches Signed condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings w...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 11 x 7.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have...

Rinzen, 2021 by On Hansen Oil stick, wax, acrylic, and organic handmade ink on different layers of handmade Washi paper. Image size: 98 cm. H x 65 cm. W Unfr...

"Paysage en expansion is an contemporary artwork realized by Eugene de Kermadec in 1972 Mixed colored oil on canvas Signed lower left Provenance: Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (lab...