1980s Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Modern neutral toned abstract gouache painting by Texas based artist Dee Wolff. The work features Hebrew text from Hekhalot literature surrounded by colorf...

Jack Scott "#8" 1980 Interwoven, continuous line, charcoal, drawing on paper 40"x30" unframed Signed and dated in pencil on reverse Now available for purcha...

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

Modern colorful abstract gouache painting by Texas based artist Dee Wolff. The work features Hebrew text from Hekhalot literature surrounded by yellow burs...

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

Work on paper without frame

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

Work on Japan paper With frame. Total size with frame: 44x32x3 cm

This striking large-scale abstract study depicts flashes of blue, white and green pastel lines against a blue wash background. Signed with initials and dated to the lower right. Pres...

Blue & yellow abstract watercolor by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Signed on verso and unframed. Image...

Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Study for Worlds Beyond, 1980 Graphite, collage and white heightening on illustration board Signed and dated lower right 10.75 x 4.5 in...

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...

Subtly shaded abstract figurative illustration by Elsa Warnick (American, 1942-2013). Two adult and three baby figures are rendered with subtle tan shading, against an abstract background with geometric shapes and swirling ribbons. One of the two adult figures is laying down, while the other appears to be jumping or dancing. Notable is the skillful use of negative space to balance the composition. Signed and dated "Warnick 1982" in the lower right corner. Signed, titled, and dated with materials information on verso. Presented in a silver aluminum frame. Frame size: 23.5"H x 31.25"W Paper size: 23.25"H x 31"W Elsa Warnick (American, 1942-2013) was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. She moved to Portland to attend the Reed College/Museum Art School joint five year program. Warnick went on to create many works of art as well as teach art and illustration. She is mostly known for her watercolor paintings, including the illustration of several children's books. Some of her pieces are held in the Portland Art Museum’s collection. Selected Exhibitions: 1974: University Center Gallery, Willamette University - Salem, OR 1978: Mayer Gallery...

This striking large-scale abstract study depicts flashes of blue, white and red pastel lines against a black wash background. Signed and dated to the lower right. Presented in a cont...

Work on paper to frame

Robert Longo Pressure, 1983 Acrylic and Graphite on Paper Signed and dated 'Robert Longo 83’ (lower right) in graphite Frame included: Floated and framed in a museum quality frame with UV plexiglass This is a unique painting "Pressure " [on God], Robert Longo's unique acrylic and graphite work on paper, was created during the same period as his iconic work, simply labeled "Pressure", now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y. Whereas the latter depicts a young man, the present work, titled "Pressure on Heaven", then deliberately changed to "Pressure on God", is more ethereal in subject matter, though the lone youth's image is still present in the composition. From Lexander magazine: "In the excerpt from Neal Benezra’s article about 1980s art in the previous post, he writes, “Robert Longo’s Pressure might well be the most representative work of art of the 1980s.” I would go further and state that it is the definitive work of the 1980s—the penultimate visual anthem of the era—and most especially the period between 1979—1987, during which the musical genres of gothic rock and deathrock flourished and achieved their greatest artistic successes through the work of a variety of diverse bands including Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees...

Transfixing and vivid watercolor of abstract striated colors, rolling together like leaves in the wind or waves of sand dunes. Signed lower right by Kejima, 1980. Original artwork o...

Erwin Pfrang, German (b. 1951) Graphite, Colored Pencil on paper Framed 20.5/8 X 16.5/8 sheet 6 X 7.75 Erwin Pfrang (born 1951, in Munich) is a German painter and printmaker. Pfrang studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1974–79. Later he spent many years as an independent artist in Montepulciano, Val d’Orcia and Catania, Italy, interrupted by stays in Munich and Augsburg. He presently lives and works in Berlin. Erwin Pfrang is the grandson of the Munich folk comedian Konstantin Pfrang. Carla Schulz-Hoffmann makes an attempt at characterising the painter: “An artist such as Erwin Pfrang inhabits an alternative world, a tiny microcosm of subjectivity, and lives that life uncompromisingly, with all the limitations and hardships that it entails. Among twentieth-century artists a comparable stance can be encountered perhaps in Jean Fautrier, but certainly in Otto Wols. His oeuvre relates in its figuration to Bosch or James Ensor and his oil painting to Lucian Freud in its painterly quality. Erwin Pfrang is represented by gallerists Fred Jahn, Munich (Exhibition: Don’t Forget Your Mask: Don’t (Part I: Don’t Forget Your Mask), Forget (Part II: Don’t Forget Your Mask), Your Mask (Part III: Don’t Forget Your Mask)Artists: Imi Knoebel, Barry Le Va, Karel Appel, Alexi Tsioris, William N. Copley, Isa Genzken...

Jay Rosenblum Polarity #3, 1981 Acrylic on paper 6 × 9 1/2 inches Signed and titled in graphite pencil on the front Unframed This gem of a work is an acrylic painting on paper by ren...

Blue and pink toned abstract landscape by Texas artist Patrick Palmer. The painting depicts two architectural arches against a cool and warm sunset sky. Pencil inscriptions are seen ...

Bright abstracted landscape by Maxine "Mickey" Spencer (American, 1927-2011). Strong blues and magentas create an abstracted scene, evoking a body of water with trees...

Artist: Ben Hancocks Title: 31st of March Year: 1982 Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper, signed and dated Paper Size: 34 x 15 inches [86.36 x 38.1 cm] Image Size: 27.5 x 10 in. [69.85 x 25....

Black flower is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1987 by Mario Surbone. Colored mixed media (watercolor and carchoal) on paper. Hand signe...

Evocative abstract landscape by Martin Kallman (American, 1925-1992). This piece has large sections of light and shadow that overlap each other, as if c...

A bright, colorful watercolor abstract by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Anderson" on verso. From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California...

Abstracted still life with bright colors and calla lily flowers by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Unsigned, but acquired from the estate of Les Anderson in Mont...

Pink & purple abstract watercolor by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Sign...

Highly detailed rendering of a kimono by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). The ribbons in this piece have a metallic quality to them. Signed "Patricia A Pearce" in the bottom r...

Surrealist architectural landscape drawing by Houston, Texas artist Patrick Palmer. The work features a prominent, brutalist archway set against a blended red sky. Currently hung in ...

Untitled (Purple and Yellow) Pastel on paper, 1981 Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Collection of Jan Cowles Jan Cowles was married to Gardner Cowles owner of Cowles Media Company (1935–1998) which owned newspapers, magazines and information publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The company operated Cowles Business Media, Cowles Creative Publishing, and Cowles Enthusiast Media units. Owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune from 1935 to 1998, other newspapers owned at one time by Cowles Media and its affiliates included the Des Moines Register, the Buffalo Courier...

A bold abstract watercolor with yellow and blue, contrasted with red accents by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Anderson" on verso. From the estate o...

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) is one of the essential American abstract painters that radically defined post-war abstraction in New York City. Today, his work appears in museum collections around the world and is instantly recognizable for its boldness and black forms. His auction record was set in 2018 at $12.6 million USD. In addition to his impressive paintings, Motherwell is also revered as one of the most innovative and prolific printmakers of the 20th century. He was always searching for new techniques, whether at his own printmaking atelier, or collaborating with others, to expand his ideas and express his aesthetic. Created in 1980, "Paris Suite...

A lovely 1985 sculptural drawing by Joel Shapiro utilizing shades of pink, brown, white, gray and black. Signed on the verso. Framed Provenance: McIntosh/Drysdale Gallery, Washington...

Abstract composition is an original contemporary artwork realized by Loris Ferrari in 1987. Tempera and chalk on paper. Hand signed and dated by the artist.

Dusk Time is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1986 by Mario Surbone. Colored mixed media (watercolor and carchoal) on paper. Hand signed b...

The painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

11 color screen print Signed, dated, titled and numberedin pencil Edition: 150 (9/150) Provenance: Estate of the Artist By Decent

Abstract cityscape watercolor with loosely defined landscape elements and geometric shapes by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 19...

Untitled (Yellow, Gray and Pink) Pastel on paper, 1981 Signed and dated lower right Condition: Excellent Sheet size: 12 x 18 inches Frame size: 15 x 21 inches Provenance: Jan Cowles Jan Cowles was married to Gardner Cowles owner of Cowles Media Company (1935–1998) which owned newspapers, magazines and information publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The company operated Cowles Business Media, Cowles Creative Publishing, and Cowles Enthusiast Media units. Owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune from 1935 to 1998, other newspapers owned at one time by Cowles Media and its affiliates included the Des Moines Register, the Buffalo Courier...

From Earth is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1988 by Mario Surbone. Colored watercolor on paper. Hand signed and dated by the artist on...

An original painting by contemporary American painter, Murray Reich. Nicely framed. House and Sky by Murray Reich, American (1932–2012) Date: 1980 Acrylic and Collage on Paper, sign...

This refined ink on paper work was realized by the renowned American artist Alexander Markovich circa 1985, which the scholar Svetlana Rakic called "The most dispersed and energy-cha...

Blue, purple, and green toned winter landscape pastel drawing by German-American painter, Wolf Kahn. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Framed and matted in a gold frame...

Vibrant and fun figurative abstract of creatures on the ocean floor by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. U...

1980s abstract expressionist biomorphic coloured pencil drawing on paper by Belgian artist André Pierret, signed bottom right. André Pierret was born ...

Bird Man by Rick Bartow, pastel on paper, abstract, white, red, pink, blue,black

Artist: Ben Hancocks Title: 24th April Year: 1982 Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper, signed and dated Paper Size: 34 x 15 inches [86.36 x 38.1 cm] Image Size: 27.5 x 11 in. [69.85 x 27.94 cm]

The painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

The painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

A bold abstract expressionist watercolor with yellow and purple, contrasted with dynamic red linear accents, by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Ander...

This Vicente has a color glow akin to a Mark Rothko. Vicente explored parallel ideas to Rothko and others of the abstract expressionist and color field era. The pastel gives this w...

Signed lower left, 'Carole Barnes AWS' (American, 20th century) and painted circa 1985. Carole Barnes has exhibited widely and with success and is the r...

SEYMOUR LIPTON Seymour Lipton Untitled sculptural study, 1981 Charcoal on paper hand signed and dated in charcoal pencil on the front Framed Original drawing done in charcoal by...