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Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

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Period: Mid-20th Century
“Floating Forms”
Located in Southampton, NY
Mid century modern gouache on paper by the well known Canadian/American artist, Rolph Scarlett. Signed and dated in blue pen lower left, 1947. Condition: Good. Framed in thin black matte painted frame with acid free white mat. Not examined out of frame. Overall framed 14.25 by 17 inches. ROLPH SCARLETT (1889-1984) Rolph Scarlett was born 1889 in Guelph, Ontario. His long life as an artist began in his teens as a jewelry designer and fabricator. At the age of fourteen he began to design jewelry professionally, a craft which he continued off and on for the rest of his life. His desire to learn more about art took him to New York in 1908, when American artists were just beginning to experience strong influences from major modern European artists of the day such as Cezanne and Picasso. Throughout his long career he produced, oil paintings, many works on paper, unique sculptured jewelry, modernist style industrial and furniture designs. Currently there are over 800 of his designs at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Design Collection. In 1928 he moved to Hollywood, California where he became a very successful stage and set designer. In the mid-1930s he met the director of the Museum of Non-objective Art in New York ( Hilla Rebay). He became her close associate and advisor in organizing and running the museum. He was Chief lecturer at the museum (1939 -1946) teaching the new modernism and abstraction to the new generation of artists in the New York art community. Hilla Rebay would introduce him as “Rolph Scarlett, my great find”. So considerable was her enthusiasm for Scarlett, that she and Solomon Guggenheim bought over sixty of his paintings and monotypes for the museum. After Kandinsky and Bauer, there was more of Scarlett’s work in the collection than any other artists. He participated in many of the museum exhibitions and galleries and was regularly exhibiting his work in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Museum, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Modern Age Gallery in N.Y., the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. He studied for a time at the Art Student League with William Merrit...
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Gouache

1967 Abstract 2 Purple and Yellow" Mid Century Watercolor Abstract
Located in Arp, TX
Michael Knigin Abstract 2 Purple and Yellow 1967 Ink brush and watercolor on paper 8.25"x11" unframed $675 Signed and dated in ink lower left Came from artist's estate *Custom framin...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

Stripes, Watercolor by Kenneth Noland circa 1965
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kenneth Noland, American (1924 - 2010) Title: Stripes Year: circa 1965 Medium: Watercolor Size: 4.5 in. x 6.75 in. (11.43 cm x 17.15 cm) Frame Size: 11.5 x 13.5 inches
Category

Abstract Geometric Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Bicep
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994) was an influential American artist who worked with drawing, painting, printmaking, and most notably sculpture. Dehner's legacy has been overshadowed by he...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

Sonia Delaunay - Original Watercolor on paper
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Sonia Delaunay - Original Watercolor on paper Dimensions: 21 x 21 cm. Authentified by her son Charles Delaunay on the back. Sonia Delaunay was known for her vivid use of color and her bold, abstract patterns, breaking down traditional distinctions between the fine and applied arts as an artist, designer and printmaker. Born Sarah Stern on November 14, 1885 in Gradizhsk, Ukraine, she was adopted in 1890 by her maternal uncle, Henri Terk, a lawyer in St. Petersburg, where she grew up, exposed to music and art, and learning several foreign languages. In 1903, she moved to Germany to study drawing with Ludwig Schmidt-Reutler (1863–1909) at the Karlsruhe academy of fine arts; Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), composer-to-be, was among her classmates there. In 1905, she traveled to Paris where she attended art classes at the Académie de la Palette, learned printmaking from Rudolf Grossman (1889–1941), and met Amédée Ozenfant (1886–1966), André Dunoyer de Segonzac (1884–1974), and Jean-Louis Boussingault (1883–1943). Sonia spent much of her time at exhibitions and galleries in Paris, which showed works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard, and Edouard Vuillard, as well as Les Fauves, Henri Matisse and André Derain. She did, however, maintain contact with Germany, exhibiting at the Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, in 1913, 1920 and 1921. During her first year in Paris, Sonia met the German collector and art-dealer, Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), whom she married on December 5, 1908, and whose Montparnasse gallery, the Galerie Notre-Dame des Champs, showed her first solo exhibition. Through Uhde, Sonia encountered many painters, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). In 1910, Sonia divorced Uhde by mutual agreement, married Delaunay that same year, and gave birth to their son, Charles, in January 1911. Together Sonia and Robert Delaunay pursued the study of color, influenced by theories of Michel-Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889). Sonia’s interest in simultaneous contrast, as evidenced in her early collages, book bindings, small painted boxes...
Category

Abstract Geometric Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Untitled Abstraction
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled Abstraction Graphite on paper, c. 1946 Signed with the estate stamp verso Provenance: estate of the Artist Inherited by his neighbor/caregiver Conditio...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite

Abstract Eye
Located in Houston, TX
Mid-century French modern abstract painting of green and blue eye, circa 1960. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat fits a standard-size frame....
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Pen

Ricochet
Located in Cliffside Park, NJ
Born in Czechoslovakia on May 5, 1914. Laisner studied at the University of Chicago and AIC. Most of his career was spent in Pullman, WA as a professor at the state college. He died ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

1960s Illegibly signed surrealist ink drawing
Located in New York, NY
Unknown Artist Untitled, c. 1960s Ink on paper Sight size: 10 x 7 in. Framed: 15 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. Signed illegibly lower right: Jack Bl...?
Category

Surrealist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink

October 1, from Betty Parsons Gallery, India ink on paper, Signed Framed w/label
Located in New York, NY
Jack Youngerman October 1, from Betty Parsons Gallery, 1964 India ink on paper, with original Betty Parsons Gallery label Pencil signed and dated '64 on the front; also signed, title...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

India Ink

ALPSPITZE #3 (with Zabriskie Gallery Label), original pencil drawing of Bavaria
Located in New York, NY
Marsden Hartley ALPSPITZE #3 (with Zabriskie Gallery Label), 1933 Pencil on cream wove paper. In original vintage frame with Zabriskie Gallery label Sticker label, framed with Zabris...
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pencil

Untitled - Blush
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994) was an influential American multidisciplinary artist who worked with drawing, painting, printmaking, and most notably sculpture. Despite her artistic cont...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

1950s Original Signed Abstract Expressionist Watercolor in Soft Pastel Colors
Located in Denver, CO
This soft toned abstract expressionist watercolor painting, created by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968), is an exceptional example of his evolution as an artist. Featuring bold sw...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Clifford Ellis Mid-Century Abstract drawing Modern British Art
Located in London, GB
We acquired a series of paintings and drawings from Clifford and Rosemary Ellis's studio. To find more scroll down to "More from this Selle...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gouache

Clifford Ellis Abstract Painting Mid-Century Modern British Art Grey & Black
Located in London, GB
We acquired a series of paintings from Clifford and Rosemary Ellis's studio. To find more scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below ...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gouache

Untitled. Form in Space.
Located in New York, NY
Pencil drawing on paper from 1944. Signed and dated with cypher. Paper size 4 x 6" (10 x 15.1 cm). Werner Drewes (1899-1985), painter, printmaker, educator and lecturer, was...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pencil

Prise De Possession Du Tout, 1960 - mixed media, 33x34 cm, framed
Located in Nice, FR
Gouche and technic mixte on paper.signed in the text. Benjamin Vautier was born July 18, 1935 in Naples, Italy to a French family. He is the great-grandson of the Swiss painter Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier [fr] (1829-1898). He discovered Yves Klein and the Nouveau Réalisme in the 1950s, but he became quickly interested in the French dada artist Marcel Duchamp and the music of John Cage. In 1959, Vautier founded the journal Ben Dieu.[2] In 1960, he had his first one-man show, Rien et tout in Laboratoire 32. Ben joined George Maciunas...
Category

Conceptual Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media

Ben ZIon Expressionist Judaica Rabbi Watercolor Painting Jewish Modernist WPA
Located in Surfside, FL
Frame measures 13.5 X 11.5 Paper measures 6.5 X 4 inches Hand signed lower right Watercolor painting of prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated h...
Category

Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Dancing Figurative Study of a Nude Woman
Located in Houston, TX
Figurative study of a dancing woman. The work is signed by Thierry Andre thought to be a French who was influenced by Edgar Degas. The paper is not fr...
Category

Naturalistic Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite

Harbor Party, Modern Gouache by John von Wicht
Located in Long Island City, NY
Harbor Party by John von Wicht, German (1888–1970) Date: circa 1965 Gouache and Pastel on Japon, signed in pencil lower right Size: 15.5 x 23 in. (39.37 x 58.42 cm) Frame Size: 22 x ...
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gouache, Oil Pastel

Jan Stanley Hiller (b.1918) - Mid 20th Century Watercolour, Feeding the Birds
Located in Corsham, GB
Signed. On laid.
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

City 13. 1966, paper, monotype, varnish, 47x77 cm
Located in Riga, LV
City 13. 1966, paper, monotype, varnish, 47x77 cm Soikans Nikolay, pseudonym Niklo de Martell (till 1953.) 1926. 9 IX Ludza – 1980. 21 II Lester, Great Britain – graphic artist. ...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Monotype, Varnish

1940s American Modernist Abstract Industrial Watercolor Ink Charcoal Painting
Located in Denver, CO
This original vintage painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968), titled Quitting Time from Bunnell's Black and Blue Series from 1941, exemplifies his unique Abstract Structure ...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor

Morris Graves, Abandon Nest, 1950, drawing
Located in New York, NY
This is a complicated drawing, even for Morris Graves (1910-2001), known as the Mystical Painter of Nature. Graves tried to be sensitive to the slightest tremor or breeze that a sma...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor

Abstract Expressionist Watercolor Fiery Sky
Located in Surfside, FL
Genre: Expressionist Subject: Landscape Medium: Watercolor Surface: Paper Country: United States Dimensions w/Frame: 16" x 28" Murray Hantman (1904–1999) was a painter, muralist, an...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Abstract with Figures Israeli Mid Century Modernist Woodcut Watercolor Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
An abstracted composition containing a kneeling figure . this is a stamped print, woodcblock most likely artfully combined with moody watercolor. Stefan Alexander, born Czechoslovak...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Woodcut

Transformista 3 - Original Figurative Drawing
Located in Soquel, CA
Transformista 3 - Original Figurative Drawing by Jose Luis Cuevas (b. 1934 d. 2017.) This original ink drawing by Cuevas depicts two distorted figures pressing their faces together....
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink

Early 20th Century Abstract Collage by New York Artist
Located in Beachwood, OH
Byron Browne (American, 1907-1961) Abstract Collage, 1933 Collage, charcoal and ink on paper Signed and dated lower middle 16 x 19.5 inches 24 x 29 inches, framed Byron Browne was a...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal, Ink

Untitled (SF64-121)
Located in London, GB
Sam Francis Untitled (SF64-121) 1964 Gouache and oil on paper 69.9 x 104.4 cms (27 1/2 x 41 1/8 ins) SF14605 Exhibited: New York, 'Chamberlain/Francis', Van Doren Waxter, July 11- ...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gouache

Abstract Boat Composition - Mid 20th Century Mixed Media by George De Goya
Located in Watford, Hertfordshire
Professor George De Goya. PhD. MA. FRSA. Born In Budapest, 1915-1992, related to the Spanish artist Goya on his mother’s side. Educated in Budapest and France where he received a de...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal, Pastel

UNTITLED
Located in New York, NY
felt tip pen on paper.
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Crayon

A Striking 1950s Mid-Century Modern Cubist Portrait of a Young Man
Located in Chicago, IL
A Striking, 1950s Mid-Century Modern Cubist Portrait of a Young Man by Noted Chicago Artist, Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). A small gem, this charming studio portrait study is charc...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

"Sketch for the Spinner" Alexander Calder, Preliminary Drawing for Mobile
Located in New York, NY
Alexander Calder Preliminary drawing for the Spinner, 1966 Signed lower right Felt tip pen on paper Overall 27 x 15 1/2 inches Individual sheets 8 x 10 1/2 inches Alexander Calder ...
Category

Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Felt Pen

Robert Goodnough, Seated Girl, original hand signed charcoal drawing
Located in New York, NY
ROBERT GOODNOUGH Seated Girl, 1961 Charcoal Drawing on Paper 23 3/4 × 18 inches Hand signed in charcoal on the front Unframed Unique This is an exquisite, rare poignant early Robert ...
Category

Abstract Expressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal

ABSTRACT American Woman Abstract Non-objective Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing
Located in New York, NY
ABSTRACT American Woman Abstract Non-objective Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Irene Rice Pereira (1902-1971) Abstract 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches Watercolor, gouache, and ink on black paper Signed lower right Framed by Bark BIO rene Pereira was born in 1902 in Chelsea, Massachusetts and grew up in Great Barrington. She was strongly influenced by her mother who was an amateur artist. Irene began art lessons at the age of fifteen; she took a secretarial job because her father had died. She took art classes at the Art Students League in New York City. At the age of twenty-one she married the first of three husbands, Humberto Pereira, whose name she kept. She traveled extensively in Europe and North Africa and was much inspired by the expansive vistas of the Sahara Desert. Returning to New York, she began incorporating these visions into her work, increasingly experimental in her styles and methods. At first she painted on canvas, then she devised a means of actually incorporating light into her works by painting on layers of glass and mounting the layers together. In 1942 she married George Brown, an engineer, who helped her experiment with a variety of materials. By the 1950s she became more interested in writing poetry and, divorced from Brown in 1952, she married George Reavey, an Irish Poet...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

Abstract Work on Paper Mid-Century Modernism Greek American Gouache Drawing
Located in New York, NY
Abstract Work on Paper Mid-Century Modernism Greek American Gouache Drawing. A modernist artist who emigrated to America from Greece in 1904, when he was fourteen years old, Jean Xceron is described as having a reputation as an artist that has mysteriously fallen into obscurity---especially since he was reportedly quite prominent during his lifetime. However, a partial explanation of that omission is the fact that many of his papers and early records have been lost. He was a painter of biomorphic abstractions and did collages, which were influenced by Dadaism. Xceron was active in New York City when modernism was gaining influence. Of him during this period, it was written that his artistic role was "a vital link between what is commonly termed as the first-generation (the Stieglitz group, the Synchromists, etc.) and second-generation, the American Abstract Artists, the Transcendental Painting...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Gouache

An Avant-Garde, Mid-Century Modern Abstract Female Figure Study by Harold Haydon
Located in Chicago, IL
A Dynamic, Avant-Garde, Mid-Century Modern Abstract Female Figure Study by Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). A striking, black & white figural studio ink drawing on paper depicting an...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink

An Avant-Garde, Mid-Century Modern Abstract Female Figure Study by Harold Haydon
Located in Chicago, IL
A Dynamic, Avant-Garde, Mid-Century Modern Abstract Female Figure Study by Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). A striking, black & white figural studio ink drawing on paper depicting an...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink

Wigwam rouge et jaune
Located in Palm Desert, CA
"Wigwam rouge et jaune" is a gouache on paper by Alexander Calder. The unique work is signed in the lower right, “Calder 65”. Although renowned for his innovative and groundbreaking...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Gouache

Georgetown, Colorado, 1938 WPA Era Ink Drawing of Rocky Mountain Landscape
Located in Denver, CO
This vintage 1938 ink drawing by Charles Bunnell (1897–1968) captures a stunning scene of a church nestled in the majestic Rocky Mountains of Georgetown, Colorado. Executed in bold black ink on creamy white paper, the piece is signed and dated by the artist in the lower right and titled in the lower left. The image size is 7 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches, and it is framed with archival materials, with outer dimensions measuring 16 ¼ x 14 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Condition: The drawing is in good vintage condition, with no notable flaws. For a detailed condition report, please contact us directly. Provenance: This artwork comes from the estate of Charles Ragland Bunnell, ensuring its authenticity. About Charles Bunnell: Charles Bunnell was a prominent American artist whose career spanned multiple styles and influences. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he moved to Colorado Springs around 1915, where he developed a love for art. After serving in World War I, Bunnell studied at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center), where he met his wife, Laura Palmer...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink

Two Crosses
Located in Palm Desert, CA
"Two Crosses" is a gouache on paper by Alexander Calder. The work is signed in the lower right, "Calder 65”. Although renowned for his innovative and groundbreaking sculptures, Alexander Calder started his artistic career as an abstract painter, preferring to use gouache. What is gouache? Gouache is a water-soluble paint – a type of opaque watercolor. As Calder returned to gouache painting towards the end of his life, he was now armed with a lifetime of experience as a sculptor. He explored the three-dimensional vocabulary of sculptural forms he had developed onto the two-dimensional surface of the paper. Certain shapes and colors recur throughout his gouaches and sculptures. Circles, ovals, and other geometric forms dominate the space. There is the same sense of energy and fluidity. The shapes do not sit on the surface but vibrate giving a feeling of movement in contrast to the static nature of painting. Like his sculpture, Calder’s gouache...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Gouache

Jean Arp (1886-1966) - Constellation, from Art of Today, Masters of Abstract Art
Located in Varese, IT
silkscreen print, made in 1953 for Art of Today, Masters of Abstract Art, Album I Limited edition of 300 copies , paper size: 65 x 50 cm framed size: 74 x 58 cm artist's pencil signa...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

C Print

Untitled (abstract 1957)
Located in Columbia, MO
Perle Fine (American, 1905–1988) Perle Fine’s work is distinguished by a refined sense of balance, gestural energy, and a deep engagement with the language of abstraction. A key figu...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

French Expressionist Abstract Original Painting Artists Studio Provenance
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
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...
Category

Abstract Impressionist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Oil

MAGIC CASEMENT, Abstract Non-Objective Mid-Century Pastel Color Field Drawing
Located in New York, NY
MAGIC CASEMENT, Abstract Non-Objective Mid-Century Pastel Color Field Drawing "Magic Casement" 16 x 20 ¾ inches Pastel on paper Initialed JD and dated February 22, 1967 lower left, Titled lower right The framed work measure 18 x 23 inches. Provenance: James Daugherty...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pastel

Two Golfers and a Caddy
Located in Missouri, MO
Fred Conway “Two Golfers and a Caddy” c. 1965 Pen, Ink & Watercolor on Paper 13 x 17 inches Signed A member of the faculty of the Washington University Art School from 1929 to 1970, Frederick Conway...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor, Archival Paper, Pen

Mid-Century Modernist Watercolor & Gouache Painting by Robert Natkin
Located in New York, NY
This ethereal and beautifully colored Mid-Century Modernist Watercolor & Gouache Painting by Robert Natkin originates from the United States, C.1963. A significant figure in abstract...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache

WOODED LANDSCAPE WITH HOUSES Signed Watercolor, Trees, African American Artist
Located in Union City, NJ
WOODED LANDSCAPE WITH HOUSES Signed original brush and ink on wove paper, circa 1950. WOODED LANDSCAPE WITH HOUSES is an original watercolor brush and ink on paper, hand signed in ink pen by African-American artist, teacher, and printmaker Ronald Joseph (1910--1992) Artwork depicts an abstract landscape, is in good condition, paper tape remaining on reverse side edges, mounted in an archival acid-free mat, unframed. Artwork paper size - 18 x 21.5 in. Year created - c. 1950 About the artist - Ronald Joseph (1910 -1992) was born on the island of St. Kitts, West Indies In 1910. When he was very young, his mother decided to move to the United States but she could not afford to take him with her. Mr. and Mrs. Theophilus Joseph, a childless couple who were friends of Joseph’s mother, adopted him. Afterwards, the Joseph family moved to the Island of Dominica, where they stayed for ten years. In 1921, his foster parents also decided to come to the United States. In New York, Joseph met his mother but remained living with his foster parents. In 1926 Ronald Joseph received a scholarship for the Ethical Culture School, were he spent two and half years of his high school period. At this time he obtained an art scholarship through Dr. Henry Fritz, with whom he became acquainted through his art teacher in public school. Joseph was taken into the Saturday art class, where he was the only black participant. An artistic prodigy, Ronald Joseph had his student works shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ronald Joseph graduated from Ethical Culture Fieldston School in 1929. He was honored as “the most promising” young artist in New York City’s schools. He began his study at Pratt Institute in 1931 and graduated in 1934. During the 1930s and 1940s, Joseph participated in many exhibitions of African-American art, the Works Progress Administration mural project, and the Harlem Artists Guild. Ronald Joseph enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps at the declaration of World War II and was posted as a member of the ground crew in Tuskegee, Alabama, and in Michigan. At the end of the war in 1945, he received his G. I. Bill of Rights scholarship. In 1948, he was presented with the Rosenwald Fellowship. The funds allowed him to live and work abroad – first in Peru for two years, then in Paris. Joseph used the G.I. bill to study in Paris at the Grande Chaumière. He described this period of his life as being “independent of economy”. His work from these travels is largely undocumented; according to Rosenwald scholar, Daniel Schulman, many pieces of art are undated or simply dated “1948-1952”. After this period he came back to New York without money and work and indicated this as period of hardship. Ronald Joseph left the U.S. in 1956, disappointed in the unreceptiveness of the art world to his work with mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he felt guilty for having left the U.S. during a period when blacks were struggling for their civil rights; on the other, he felt “lucky” to have been able to live and work in place where he did not feel discrimination as intensely. He emigrated to Belgium and later settled permanently in Brussels. Ronald Joseph was married to Claire Joseph and they had a son, Robin Joseph. In 1989 Joseph returned to the United States after an absence of thirty-three years to attend the Lehman College exhibition and symposium and to renew his old friendships. Afterward, he returned to Brussels where he continued to work as a painter, living there for the remainder of his life. Ronald Joseph started his artistic career in Harlem, New York City at the Harlem Community Arts Center, where he was one of the youngest pupils. Joseph studied lithography and other printmaking techniques with Riva Helfond, who taught him many aspects of the process based on simple techniques, including how to operate the press, and how to prepare the stones. Helfond played a significant role as a teacher of lithography at the Harlem Art Center. Joseph produced his first lithographs under her supervision, and this was at a time when she was just beginning to learn the medium herself. At the Harlem Community Arts Center Joseph met Robert Blackburn, who was his classmate. In 1937 Ronald Joseph depicted Blackburn, in one of his most famous works, that is now located at The Metropolitan Museum collection. Experimenting with lithography and etching, as well as woodblock and silkscreen printing, Joseph explored the techniques of printmaking alongside his friend Robert Blackburn. Joseph described the Harlem Art Center as a “healthy and lively” place, where he had made wonderful friends. In the late thirties, he also served as a teacher at the Harlem Community Arts Center. There Joseph met younger artist Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight. They formed a friendship, where they enjoyed conversations and visiting museums together. Both Joseph and Knight would hire Lawrence to pose for them. Jacob Lawrence considered Ronald Joseph to be a very intellectual artist. In the 1930s, Joseph became chairman of the Harlem Artists Guild and represented it in Washington with Stuart Davis and Hugo Gellert. Ronald Joseph was also a participant in the mural section of WPA and a representative of the Harlem Artists’ Guild to the New York World’s Fair (1939-1940). Joseph’s early oil paintings were influenced by Picasso, Braque and other European artists while most of his contemporaries focused on social realism. By 1943, he was hailed by art historian James Porter as New York’s “foremost Negro abstractionist painter”. His pastels and gouaches from the late forties and early fifties showed a highly structured abstraction combined with a studied spontaneity. Ronald Joseph’s finely tuned abstractions often incorporated representational elements along with apparently “purer” forms. He described this aspect of his work in these terms: “It’s not abstract and abstract at the same time. It’s pure creation.” His works from the 1950s employed both still life and landscape as pretexts for masterly exercises in nearly abstract pictorial construction related to cubism and fauvism. During World War II, Joseph was drafted. After the war he formed “a kind of a group” with Robert Blackburn, Charles White, Larry Potter, and Reginald Gammon...
Category

Contemporary Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media, Watercolor, Ink

Personne Suite No. 9
Located in Columbia, MO
Dorothea Tanning (American, 1910–2012) Initially associated with the Surrealist movement, Dorothea Tanning developed a personal visual language that blurred the boundaries between r...
Category

Surrealist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Etching

"Country Haircut"
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim’s of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery is proud to offer this piece by Milton Avery (1885 – 1965). Milton Avery was a prominent Modernist painter whose work combined abstraction and...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache, Paper

Lechaim!
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Jules Olitski (1922-1977) is one of the most collected and accomplished artists associated with the color-field movement, if not 20th-century American abstraction. Created in the m...
Category

Color-Field Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel, Mixed Media

Gnarled Tree - African American Artist
Located in Miami, FL
Executed in 1930, this abstract yet representational biomorphic charcoal work by African American Artist Charles Henry Alston prefigures his ...
Category

American Realist Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

1930s American Modern Farm Landscape Watercolor with Barns, Windmill & Fields
By Samuel Bolton Colburn
Located in Denver, CO
This original watercolor painting by acclaimed American artist Samuel Bolton Colburn captures a quiet farmstead nestled in a mountain valley. Rendered with Colburn’s signature contro...
Category

American Modern Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Sans titre
Located in PARIS, FR
Unique work mixed media H63 x W 78 cm (Framed)
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media

Pre-War Abstraction - Modernism - Tan Bronze Tope - Nonrepresentational
Located in Miami, FL
Pioneering female abstract artist Elsie Driggs paints stylized abstract organic forms in a warm palette of orange browns and tope. She merges abstraction with some figuration. A structured face composed of lines and tone emerges from an orange background. It's 1939, and even though Driggs is not well known, she is preceding many of the marquee names of abstraction by a decade. Although under the radar, this is a major work and is titled on the back stretcher is " Egyptian Gothic." It features the artist's inventiveness with her fine pencil lines incorporated in flat washes of color and collage elements. Signed lower right and inscribed on frame verso with title, artist and the date of 1939. Provenance, Christie's, Freemans. Framed under glass.. Elsie Driggs (1898 – July 12, 1992 in New York City) was an American painter known for her contributions to Precisionism, America's one indigenous modern-art movement before Abstract Expressionism, and for her later floral and figurative watercolors, pastels, and oils. She was the only female participant in the Precisionist movement, which in the 1920s and 1930s took a Cubist-inspired approach to painting the skyscrapers and factories that had come to define the new American landscape. Her works are in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Houston Museum of the Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. She was married to the American abstract artist Lee Gatch. Career Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Driggs grew up in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City, in a family that was supportive of her artistic interests. After a summer spent painting with her sister in New Mexico in her late teens, she felt she had found her life's calling. At twenty, she enrolled in classes at the Art Students League of New York, where she studied under George Luks and Maurice Sterne, both of whom were charismatic, inspirational figures in her early life. She also attended the evening criticism classes held at the home of painter John Sloan. Driggs spent fourteen months in Europe from late 1922 to early 1924, drawing and studying Italian art. There she met Leo Stein, first in Paris and later in Florence, who became an important intellectual influence, and who urged her to study Cézanne. He also introduced her to the works of Piero della Francesca, the Renaissance artist for whom she felt throughout her life the greatest admiration.[1] Driggs eventually settled in New York City, where she found representation with the progressive Charles Daniel Gallery.[2] (Advised that the old-fashioned and misogynistic Daniel would be unlikely to take on a woman artist, she signed the works she left for his consideration simply "Driggs" and waited to meet him in person until he had expressed his eagerness to include her in his gallery.)[3] In sympathy with those artists Daniel represented who were part of the burgeoning Precisionist movement, such as Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, George Ault, Niles Spencer, and Preston Dickinson, she too painted "the modern landscape of factories, bridges, and skyscrapers with geometric precision and almost abstract spareness."Impressionism and academic or Ashcan realism represented the past, in Driggs' view, and she intended to be resolutely modern. She was an attractive and engaging woman, but her demeanor belied a strong ambition and a clear sense of what it would take to make her mark in the New York art world. Driggs was part of the pre-eminent first group of Precisionist painters, including Demuth and Sheeler, who exhibited at the Daniel Gallery in the 1920s. Although a later group of Precisionist painters, including Louis Lozowick, Ralston Crawford and others, came on the American Art scene during the 1930s, Driggs felt that the style came to an end with the 1929 stock market crash.[5] In 1926 she painted her most famous work, Pittsburgh, a dark and brooding picture now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which depicts the gargantuan smokestacks of the Jones & Laughlin steel mills in Pittsburgh. Its focus is an overpowering mass of black and gray smokestacks, thick piping, and crisscrossing wires with only clouds of smoke to relieve the severity of the image, yet it was an image in which she found an ironic beauty. She called the picture "my El Greco" and expressed surprise that viewers in later years interpreted the painting as a work of social criticism. Like the other Precisionists (e.g., Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Louis Lozowick, Stefan Hirsch), she was concerned with applying modernist techniques to renderings of the new industrial and urban landscape, not in commenting on potential dangers the overly mechanized modern world of 1920s America might present. If anything, Precisionism, like Futurism, was a celebration of man-made energy and technology. One year later, she painted Blast Furnaces, in a similar vein. As noted above, Piero della Francesca's mural depicting "The Story of the True Cross" in Arezzo, with its tubular, static and frozen forms was the major influence on Driggs' "Pittsburgh" (it may have been the major influence for "Blast Furnaces" as well).[7] After Pittsburgh, Driggs' most acclaimed work was probably Queensborough Bridge...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Pencil

French Contemporary Art by Francine Ledieu - Tramery, La Chambre
Located in Paris, IDF
Oil on paper Francine Ledieu is a French artist born in 1931 who lives and works in Paris, France. In the 50s, she was a student of Maurice Rocher who...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Oil

"Color Field (Chalk on Wet Paper)" original pastel by Sylvia Spicuzza
Located in Milwaukee, WI
In this composition, Sylvia Spiczza works in the manner of color field artists like Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, presenting a gradation of colors shifting from yellow to red ...
Category

Color-Field Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) - King and Queen - Etching on Japan paper - 1968
Located in Varese, IT
etching on Japan paper , Edited in 1968, first state (of two) Limited edition of 30 copies for each state , numbered 8/30 in lower left Hand signed in pencil by artist in the lower r...
Category

Abstract Mid-20th Century Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Etching

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