Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
MODERN STYLE
The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.
Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.
The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.
Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.
Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.
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Style: Modern
Connecticut Summer Fragments
By Lee Hall
Located in New York, NY
Lee Hall (1934-), Connecticut Summer Fragments, a portfolio of watercolor, 29 in all, each about 5 ¼ x 7 ¼ inches, on hand made paper attached to a backing, i...
Category
1970s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor
"Untitled I" Jane Freilicher, Hamptons Landscape Drawing, Mid-century Abstract
Located in New York, NY
Jane Freilicher
Untitled I, 1958-59
Signed lower right
Charcoal on paper
11 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches
Provenance:
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Jane Freilic...
Category
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Charcoal
Brightly Colored 1950s Textile Design by Artist Andre Delfau
By Andre Delfau
Located in Chicago, IL
A colorful 1950s textile design (Black, yellow, blue, pink, red tones) by noted set and costume designer Andre Delfau.
Born in Paris, France in 1914, Andre Delfau became an internationally acclaimed stage, set and costume designer who worked world-wide from the 1930s to the 1980s. Delfau was a life long artist and painted independently of his noted design career. His artwork is recognized for it’s vibrant color and form, and a particularly keen use of line. He was highly influenced by the French Modern trends of Cubism and Surrealism, and his artwork is often infused with a dramatic sense of architecture and perspective.
Delfau created fashion designs for such major Paris couture houses as Balmain, Jean Patou and Balenciaga. He completed noteworthy set designs and costumes for numerous international operatic and ballet productions, including those at the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Great Britain, the Paris Opera, the Dance Theater of Harlem, the Ruth Page International Ballet, the Civic Ballet of Chicago, the Chicago Opera Ballet and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, among others. Most notably, Delfau designed the elaborate stage sets and costumes for the 1986 PBS television production of the Viennese operetta, "Die Fledermaus...
Category
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Gouache, Graphite, Paper
"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
1960s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Felt Pen
"Barns" Watercolor Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Realism Excellent Provenance
By Arthur Dove
Located in New York, NY
"Barns" Watercolor Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Realism Excellent Provenance
Arthur Dove (1880-1946)
"Barns"
5 x 7 inches
Watercolor on paper, 1940
Singed lower center
Framed: 9...
Category
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Watercolor
Modernist Abstract Expressionist Watercolor Painting Bauhaus Weimar Pawel Kontny
By Pawel Kontny
Located in Surfside, FL
Abstract watercolor composition bearing the influence of the earlier color-block compositions of Paul Klee.
Pawel August Kontny, (Polish-German-American artist) He was born in Laurahuette, Poland, in 1923, the son of a wealthy pastry shop owner. In 1939 he began studying architecture in Breslau where he was introduced to the European masters and to the work of some of the German Expressionists, soon afterward banned as "degenerate artists" and removed from museums throughout Germany by the Nazi regime. His studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, traveling in many countries as a soldier, he sketched various landscapes but in 1945, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. After the war, he studied at the Union of Nuremberg Architects to help design buildings to replace ones destroyed in the war. He recorded his impressions of the local population and the landscapes through his watercolors and drawings. Pawel Kontny thereafter moved to Nuremberg, Germany, becoming a member of the Union of Nuremberg Architects and helping to rebuild the city's historic center. He soon decided to concentrate on his professional art career. He married Irmgard Laurer, a dancer with the Nuremberg Opera. Pavel Kontny 's career as an artist was launched with his participation in an all German exhibition, held at the Dusseldorf Museum in 1952. He held one-man shows in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. During his trip to the United States in 1960, Kontny became instantly enamored with Colorado, and decided to relocate to Cherry Hills with his wife and two children. He quickly established himself in the local art community, being affiliated for a time with Denver Art Galleries and Saks Galleries. His subject matter became the Southwest. During this time he received the Prestigious Gold Medal of the Art Academy of Rome. His extensive travel provided material for the paintings he did using his hallmark marble dust technique. he also worked equally in pastel, watercolor, charcoal and pencil-and-ink. in a style which merged abstraction and realist styles, influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting and South Western American landscapes. This one bears the influence of Sam Francis. In the early 1960s he was one of only a few European-born professional artists in the state, a select group that included Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), a member of the prewar Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Germany, and Roland Detre (1903-2001), a Hungarian modernist painter. As a Denver, Colorado resident, Pavel Kontny exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, Germany and Japan. There, he was inspired by frequent trips to Native American pueblos in the Southwest, as well as by the study of the Plains Indians of Montana and Wyoming. Over the years Kontny had a number of students and generously helped young artist by hosting exhibitions at his Cherry Hills home. For many years he generously donated his paintings to support charitable causes in Denver. Influences during his European years included German pastelist C.O. Muller, German Informel painter Karl Dahmen and Swiss artist, Hans Erni. In the early 1950s his painting style showed the influence of the Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 who had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century in Germany. By the middle of the decade his style incorporated more referential abstraction and total abstraction, resulting in part from his study of Hans Hartung, a German artist based in Paris who exhibited his gestural abstract work in Germany. The American moon landing in 1969 inspired Paul Kontny...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Archival Paper
UNTITLED
Located in New York, NY
felt tip pen on paper.
Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Crayon
Modernist Abstract Lithograph w/ Multicolor Looping Line Work signed Yaakov Agam
Located in New York, NY
This Lovely Modernist Lithograph Originates from the Israeli born artist Yaakov Agam (made in Paris, France Circa 1980). This Lithograph is an Artist's Proof and a member of Agam's "...
Category
1980s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Lithograph
Black and White Abstract Figurative Drawing of Nude Female
Located in Houston, TX
Black and white figurative drawing by Texas artist William Anzalone. The drawing depicts nude women dressing up. Signed by the artist at the bottom right. Framed in a beautiful black modern frame.
Dimensions Without Frame: H 16.63 in. x W 21.5 in.
Artist Biography: William Anzalone was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935. He was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Pen, Pencil
Abstract Work on Paper Mid-Century Modernism Greek American Gouache Drawing
By Jean Xceron
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
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Gouache
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
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Ink
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
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor
Study for Worlds Beyond - Surrealist graphite drawing, Ohio artist
Located in Beachwood, OH
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...
Category
1980s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Graphite
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
1930s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink
After Ingres Drawing
Located in Palm Desert, CA
"After Ingres Drawing" is a figurative Modern pencil and watercolor on paper work by Paul Wunderlich in 1973. The artwork is 26 1/8 x 19 inches and 35 1/4 x 28 1/2 x 2 inches with th...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Pencil, Watercolor
Abstract Composition - Drawing By Reynold Arnould - 1970
Located in Roma, IT
Abstract Composition is a Color Marker Drawing realized by Reynold Arnould (Le Havre 1919 - Paris 1980).
Good condition.
No Signature.
Reynold Arnould was born in Le Havre, Fran...
Category
1970s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Permanent Marker
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
1930s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
Boogie Woogie II
Located in Missouri, MO
Boogie Woogie II, 1993
Peter Ambrose (American, b. 1953)
Charcoal on Paper
Signed and Dated Lower Right
Titled Lower Left
41 x 29 inches
46.25 x 34.25 inches with frame
BORN
1953
New York, NY
EDUCATION
1977
MFA, The School of Art Institute of Chicago
1975
BFA, Carnegie Mellon University
1974
Yale University, Summer School of Art and Music
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
1983
Visiting Artist, 2-D, 3-D Design and Graduate Advisor, Carnegie Mellon University
1995-96
Independent Study in Exhibition installation, art handling, restoration, Saint Louis University
1998
Adjunct faculty, Sculpture, Saint Louis University
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1999
Elliott Smith...
Category
1990s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Charcoal
Autograph Portraiir of Gérard Philipe und Lilli Palmer - b/w Postcard - 1960s
Located in Roma, IT
Autograph Portrait of Gérard Philipe und Lilli Palmer is a b/w postcard reproducing the photographic portrait of the above-mentioned actors, during the fi...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Photographic Paper
Untitled #4
By Jerry Opper
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork "Untitled #1" c.1970 is a colors pastel and crayon on thick paper by American artist Jerry Opper, 1924-2014. It is hand signed in pencil at the lower right corner by the artist. The image size is 26.5 x 20.5 inches, sheet size is 28.5 x 22.5 inches. It is in excellent condition, there are pastel marks on the margin all around the artwork and also on the back, see picture #1.
About the artist:
Jerry Opper was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 5, 1924. He moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1933. After graduating from Hollywood High School, he worked in movie studios and attended art classes at Chouinard Art Institute. In May 1942, Opper was drafted into the army and was then able to study at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center while his outfit was stationed in Colorado. Later he was sent to Guam and was discharged in December 1945.
Opper returned to Chouinard and his work in movie studios until 1947, when he moved to San Francisco. He enrolled as a full-time student at the California School of Fine Arts (now SFAI) and received his diploma in June of 1950. In 1948, Opper met his wife Gertrud Ruth Friedmann, daughter of artist Gustav Friedmann, whose works are also in the Lost Art Salon collection. It was love at first sight and a few weeks after their first encounter at the Black Cat in San Francisco's North Beach, they got married and enjoyed a passionate, life-long romance.
Shortly after he finished school, Opper worked briefly as a decorator’s assistant and then started his career as a commercial artist, working for several firms such as Fibreboard, Beatrix Food and Precision. Working full-time and dedicating himself to having a rich family life occupied most of Opper's time, but he continued to be creative. He was above all a family man with the pride of having raised two exceptional daughters, Erika and Jody. Year after year, Opper would painstakingly craft their Halloween costumes...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
"Country Haircut"
By Milton Avery
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
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Gouache, Paper
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
1930s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor
Sergey CHEKHONIN (1878 – 1936), theater poster project
Located in Paris, FR
Serge Tchekhonine was a Russian artist who studied applied drawing, ceramics, and pottery in St. Petersburg. He settled in France in 1928, gaining attention for his finely crafted ce...
Category
1930s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Ink, Watercolor, Gouache
Geometric Colorist Project Surrealist Drawings on Tracing Paper, France 1960s
Located in Atlanta, GA
Stunning, rare original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencil on translucent tracing paper by a French artist, circa the 1960s. The two paintings feature a geometric stu...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Color Pencil
Surrealist Geometric Colorist Project Drawings on Tracing Paper, circa 1960
Located in Atlanta, GA
Stunning original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencil on translucent tracing paper by a French artist, circa 1960. The two paintings feature a geometric study in color...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Color Pencil
Untitled
Located in New York, NY
Charles Houghton Howard was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the third of five children in a cultured and educated family with roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. His father, John Galen Howard, was an architect who had trained at M.I.T. and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed in Boston with Henry Hobson Richardson. In New York, the elder Howard worked for McKim, Mead and White before establishing a successful private practice. Mary Robertson Bradbury Howard, Charles’s mother, had studied art before her marriage. John Galen Howard moved his household to California in 1902 to assume the position of supervising architect of the new University of California campus at Berkeley and to serve as Professor of Architecture and the first Dean of the School of Architecture (established in 1903). The four Howard boys grew up to be artists and all married artists, leaving a combined family legacy of art making in the San Francisco Bay area that endures to this day, most notably in design, murals, and reliefs at the Coit Tower and in buildings on the Berkeley campus.
Charles Howard graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921 as a journalism major and pursued graduate studies in English at Harvard and Columbia Universities before embarking on a two-year trip to Europe. Howard went to Europe as a would-be writer. But a near-religious experience, seeing a picture by Giorgione in a remote town outside of Venice, proved a life-altering epiphany. In his own words, “I cut the tour at once and hurried immediately back to Paris, to begin painting. I have been painting whenever I could ever since” (Charles Howard, “What Concerns Me,” Magazine of Art 39 [February 1946], p. 63). Giorgione’s achievement, in utilizing a structured and rational visual language of art to convey high emotion on canvas, instantly convinced Howard that painting, and not literature, offered the best vehicle to express what he wanted to say. Howard returned to the United States in 1925, confirmed in his intent to become an artist.
Howard settled in New York and supported himself as a painter in the decorating workshop of Louis Bouché and Rudolph Guertler, where he specialized in mural painting. Devoting spare time to his own work, he lived in Greenwich Village and immersed himself in the downtown avant-garde cultural milieu. The late 1920s and early 1930s were the years of Howard’s art apprenticeship. He never pursued formal art instruction, but his keen eye, depth of feeling, and intense commitment to the process of art making, allowed him to assimilate elements of painting intuitively from the wide variety of art that interested him. He found inspiration in the modernist movements of the day, both for their adherence to abstract formal qualities and for the cosmopolitan, international nature of the movements themselves. Influenced deeply by Surrealism, Howard was part of a group of American and European Surrealists clustered around Julien Levy. Levy opened his eponymously-named gallery in 1931, and rose to fame in January 1932, when he organized and hosted Surrealisme, the first ever exhibition of Surrealism in America, which included one work by Howard. Levy remained the preeminent force in advocating for Surrealism in America until he closed his gallery in 1949. Howard’s association with Levy in the early 1930s confirms the artist’s place among the avant-garde community in New York at that time.
In 1933, Howard left New York for London. It is likely that among the factors that led to the move were Howard’s desire to be a part of an international art community, as well as his marriage to English artist, Madge Knight...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Gouache, Graphite
Lyre Bird (Design for the cover of Poetry London), 1943, Ink, gouache and pastel
Located in New York, NY
Ceri Richards
Lyre Bird (Design for the cover of Poetry London), 1943
Ink, gouache and pastel on paper
Bears original Jonathan Clark & Co. label on the back of the frame
Unique
Frame...
Category
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Oil Pastel, Ink, Gouache
1950s "Rectangle" Mid Century Abstract Gouache Painting
Located in Arp, TX
Opper Estate
Maroon Abstract
c. 1940-1950's
Gouache on Paper
15" x 18" Unframed
From the estate of Ruth Friedmann Opper & Jerry Opper. Ruth was the daughter of Bauhaus artist, Gustav Friedmann.
San Francisco Abstract Expression
A free-spirited wave of creative energy swept through the San Francisco art community after World War II. Challenging accepted modes of painting, Abstract Expressionists produced highly experimental works that jolted the public out of its postwar complacency.
Abstract Expressionism resulted from a broad collective impulse rather than the inspiration of a small band of New York artists. Documenting the interchanges between the East and West Coasts, she cites areas of mutual influence and shows the impact of San Francisco on the New York School, including artists such as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. San Francisco's Beat poets...
Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Agony, Motif - Drawing by Arshile Gorky - 1946
By Arshile Gorky
Located in Roma, IT
Agony, Motif is a contemporary artwork realized by Arshile Gorky in 1946.
Ink, pen and wax crayon on paper.
Incudes frame: 41.5 x 38.5
Good conditions (little tears and shading of...
Category
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Wax Crayon, Ink, Pen
'Rockport Harbor' — Mid-Century Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Louis Wolchonok, 'Rockport Harbor', gouache, c. 1950. Signed in ink, lower right. A fine, modernist work, with fresh colors, on cream wove drawing pape...
Category
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Gouache
A Sandstorm on the Little Colorado River, Arizona
Located in Storrs, CT
A Sandstorm on the Little Colorado River, Arizona. 1920. Watercolor on watercolor board. Study for Seeber 189. 10 3/8 x 14 1/4. Signed lower left; titled verso. An exquisitely subtl...
Category
Early 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor
Two Wood Ducks on a Flowering Branch
Located in New York, NY
Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Locano, a small town in the southern Appenines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals.
Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp.
Stella was nineteen when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation.
Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133).
Two Wood Ducks...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Color Pencil
Polish French Judaica Watercolor Gouache Painting Original Bauhaus Yiddish Art
Located in Surfside, FL
Moses Bahelfer BAGEL (1908-1995)
Moses Bagel (born Moshe Bahelfer) was a Polish-born Jewish artist and graphic designer associated with the original Bauhaus and then the School of Pa...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Watercolor, ABS
"Billy the Brownie With Flowers #407" original tempera by Sylvia Spicuzza
Located in Milwaukee, WI
In this painting, Sylvia Spicuzza demonstrates her skill as an illustration artist, representing the Milwaukee character Billie the Brownie with a pair of flowers. An illustration like this could grace the pages of a children's book or illustrated magazine, or as an advertisement for Schuster’s Department Store.
10 x 8 inches, artwork
17 x 13.13 inches, frame
stamped with artist signature lower left
Born in 1908, Sylvia Spicuzza was the daughter of noted painter Francesco Spicuzza. Sylvia devoted herself to teaching art to the students of Lake Bluff Elementary School in Shorewood, WI. During this time Sylvia produced a magnificent body of work that was undiscovered until her death. Sylvia's work is rich, diverse and fascinating collection of drawings, watercolors and prints from the 1920's to the 1990's. Her style ranges from early figurative drawings to regionalism, Art Deco, lyrical abstractions of every conceivable subject (both real and imagined), as well as figurative paintings that reflect the work of Picasso, Kandinsky and Max Ernst in the 1930's and 1940's. Biomorphic and organic, Modernist images are presented with Sylvia Spicuzza's own unique sense of style, humor and fantasy.
Billie the Brownie was a multi-media star of Christmas in Milwaukee from the 1920s to the 1950s. Years earlier, the writer and artist Palmer Cox...
Category
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Tempera
Untitled Abstract in Beige (Pastel Drawing)
Located in Kansas City, MO
Barbara Keidel
Untitled Abstract in Beige
Pastel Drawing on Paper
1995
Signed and dated in pencil
Size: 6.25 x 7.5 inches (15.875 x 19.05 cm)
COA provided
*Framing options avail...
Category
1990s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
Richfield
Located in London, GB
Exceptional rare sketch by American modernist Oscar Bluemner. Very, very good condition. Framed beautifully.
Category
Early 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Carbon Pencil
Abstract Mid 20th Century WPA Non Objective American Modernism New Hope Modern
By Louis Stone
Located in New York, NY
Abstract Mid 20th Century WPA Non Objective American Modernism New Hope Modern.mixed media. 21 x 16 (sight). Housed in a hand carved frame.
Louis King Stone ...
Category
1940s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Gouache, Board
Leonard Baskin Watercolor Ink Illustration Painting Darkened Man, Nude with Bird
Located in Surfside, FL
Leonard Baskin (American, 1922-2000) ink and gouache drawing on paper titled "Darkened Man", signed lower right, circa 1957.
Provenance: Grace Borgenicht gallery, Jeffrey M. Kaplan collection. bears label verso
Art: 31" H x 22" W; Frame: 36" H x 27" W.
Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.
Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated Sculpto to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960).
The Funeral Contege (1997) bronze, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.
His public commissions include a bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, erected in 1994 for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
His works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums.
The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. The McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works (some religious and biblical), most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin.
He was included in the MoMA show, Summer Exhibition: New Acquisitions; Recent American Prints, 1947–1953; Katherine S. Dreier Bequest; Kuniyoshi and Spencer; Expressionism in Germany; Varieties of Realism along with Alexander Archipenko, Francis Bacon, Balthus, Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Eugene Berman, Reg Butler, Lovis Corinth, Andre Derain, Otto Dix, Raoul Dufy, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud, George Grosz, Alexei Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, Roberto Matta, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and more. In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery, they showed many great artists, Chaim Koppelman, for many years, headed the gallery's Print Division; printmakers such as Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover, Edmond Casarella, Vincent Longo, and Nicholas Krushenick were frequent exhibitors. the gallery has represented many well-known artists, including Richard Anuszkiewicz, Robert Blackburn, Lois Dodd, William King, Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman, Roy Lichtenstein, Harold Krisel...
Category
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
India Ink, Watercolor
Untitled (Figurative Abstraction of Isadora Duncan #7)
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Abraham Walkowitz, Untitled (Figurative Abstraction of Isadora Duncan #7), pencil, 1918. Signed and dated in pencil, bottom center. A fine, spon...
Category
1910s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
Rare Israeli Modernist Judaica Watercolor Painting on Lithograph Naftali Bezem
Located in Surfside, FL
Naftali Bezem (Hebrew: נפתלי בזם; born November 27, 1924) is an Israeli painter, muralist, and sculptor.
Bezem was born in Essen, Germany, in 1924. His early adolescence was spent ...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Lithograph
Two Nude Figures - Modernist Abstract Figure Study in Red & Blue
By David Hill
Located in Soquel, CA
Gorgeous and compelling modern figural study with two figures by David Hill (American, 20th century). The figures, which are rendered in red and blue, are posed in a dynamic conversa...
Category
Early 2000s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Watercolor
Early Black & White Abstract Santa Fe Inspired Drawing of Dancing Figures
Located in Houston, TX
Early modern black and white sketch by iconic Houston based artist David Adickes. Pulled from a collection of previously undiscovered sketchbooks, this work serves as a peak behind t...
Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Pencil
Glen Orchy.
Located in Storrs, CT
Glen Orchy. c. 1925. Watercolor, pencil and conte crayon on paper. 9 1/4 x 13 (sheet 10 3/8 x 13 1/4). Ex-collection L.G. Duke,purchased at Sotheby's, London '10.12.70'. Mat line; ot...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil, Watercolor
CHAMMOMILE
Located in Zofingen, AG
This painting, executed in bright and rich tones, depicts a moment of quiet contemplation and connection with nature. The central figure is a girl with a long braid, leani...
Category
2010s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic
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
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
Early Modern Black & White Abstract Figurative Elegant Woman Drawing
Located in Houston, TX
Early modern black and white sketch by iconic Houston based artist David Adickes. Pulled from a collection of previously undiscovered sketchbooks, this work serves as a peak behind t...
Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Pencil
Composition
Located in Zug, CH
Abstract composition on paper by Karl Peter Röhl.
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
India Ink, Watercolor
Polish French Judaica Watercolor Gouache Painting Original Bauhaus Yiddish Art
Located in Surfside, FL
Moses Bahelfer BAGEL (1908-1995)
Moses Bagel (born Moshe Bahelfer) was a Polish-born Jewish artist and graphic designer associated with the original Bauhaus and then the School of Pa...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Watercolor, ABS
1950's Modernist Signed Painting - Interior Abstract Scene
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Interior Abstract
by Bernard Labbe (French mid 20th century), signed, stamped verso
original gouache painting on paper
overall size: 16 x 12 inches
condition: very good and ready to...
Category
Mid-20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Gouache
Early Abstraction II
Located in London, GB
This soft and inviting work is the second in a series of abstractions by Walkowitz. Containing a central sequence of wavey lines and a singular circle, it evokes a feelings of joy in...
Category
Early 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
Abstract Composition
By Julius Hubler
Located in Buffalo, NY
Julius Hubler, American artist. Deans scholar; State University Iowa graduate scholar, 1944; Arthur W. Dow scholar Columbia University, 1947; distinguished se...
Category
1950s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Gouache, Paper
Composition
Located in Zug, CH
Abstract composition on paper by Karl Peter Röhl.
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
India Ink, Watercolor
Homage to Klee - Tempera and Watercolor by Sergio Barletta - 1960s
Located in Roma, IT
Homage to Klee is an original tempera and watercolor artwork, realized by Sergio Barletta in the 1960s.
Hand-signed on the lower right.
In very good conditions.
The artwork repres...
Category
1960s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Tempera
Cityscape Reflections - Study No. 1
Located in Storrs, CT
Cityscape Reflections - Misty Morning. 1980. Lithograph with pastel coloring. Czestochowski 42. Edition 40. 14 x 10 3/16 (sheet 18 x 14). Tape stains in the margins, not affecting th...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
A Piano for Pete, unique signed/inscribed drawing by famed modernist sculptor
Located in New York, NY
Dorothy Dehner
A Piano for Pete, 1975
Ink on paper
Hand signed, dated and inscribed "A Piano for Pete - Best, Dorothy" on the the front
Unique
Frame included
Held in the original vin...
Category
1970s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink
Bourrée Fantasque #2 Pastel on Paper Mid 20th Century Modern as seen on 'Étoile'
Located in Glenford, NY
"Bourrée Fantasque #2", Pastel on Paper by Artist Francisco Moncion, is a Mid-20th Century fantasy image inspired by George Balanchine's 1949 ballet ...
Category
1980s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel, Pencil
Polish French Judaica Watercolor Gouache Painting Original Bauhaus Yiddish Art
Located in Surfside, FL
Moses Bahelfer BAGEL (1908-1995)
Moses Bagel (born Moshe Bahelfer) was a Polish-born Jewish artist and graphic designer associated with the original Bauhaus and then the School of Pa...
Category
20th Century Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Ink, Watercolor, ABS
'Amalfi Coastline, Italy' c 2005 , signed original mixed media painting
Located in Frome, Somerset
'Amalfi Coastline, Italy' signed mixed media on paper.
Glazed frame 53cmx 42cm
painting 36cmx27cm
A view of Amalfi, looking down to the shoreline from the hilly landscape that surrou...
Category
Early 2000s Modern Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Mixed Media
Modern abstract drawings and watercolors for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Modern abstract drawings and watercolors available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add abstract drawings and watercolors created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of orange, blue, purple, green and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Sylvia Spicuzza, Moses Bagel Bahelfer, Abraham Walkowitz, and Benoît Gilsoul. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Watercolor and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Modern abstract drawings and watercolors, so small editions measuring 3.55 inches across are also available. Prices for abstract drawings and watercolors made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1 and tops out at $260,743, while the average work sells for $950.