Ramstonev (Ramsey/Stone/Evans co-operative)

MODERNIST DRAWING New Hope Mid-Century WPA Abstract Non-Objective Jazz Modern

1937-39

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...

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...

Artist's Statement: "My paintings are an attempt to synthesize and enlighten pursuits of eastern and western art and their traditions. Using the full visual language of abstraction –...

"#186 – WOUNDED WERE COMING" is from Amy Williams' series A Farewell to Arms – wherein the artist works directly onto pages of a found copy of Ernest Hemingway's WWII romance novel. The artist selects certain words and phrases from page 186 to isolate as a poem, and then draws, inks, redacts and paints the rest of the page according to the text. The resulting poem reads "The wounded were coming / men that were scared / I felt the rain in my face / It was getting dark." – Hemingway's novel is a doomed romance between a wounded American soldier and an Italian nurse – note the feminine form on the page, with a "dress" or apron that looks skeletal, bloody and rained upon, all at once. From Amy Williams – "My recent work is focused on making treated book pages using a found vintage...