Group of 3 Figure Drawings by Ross Bleckner (attrb.)

c. 20th century

Attributed to Ross Bleckner (American, b. 1949) Group of 3 Double Sided Drawings Ink and graphite on paper Largest: 23 1/2 x 17 1/4 in. Smallest: 22 7/8 x 18 in. Ross Bleckner grew up in Hewlett, Long Island, New York; drawing all the time without being aware that other artists existed. He was the middle child between two sisters; his father manufactures electronic parts He attended New York University where Sol Lewitt, Chuck Close and others were his teachers. He graduated in 1972, then spent a year at the California Institute of Arts. His contacts in the next few years were very fortuitous; Sol Lewitt and Chuck Close, Carl Andre, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, etc. Bleckner is on the nervous side, beset by self-doubt, insomnia, and gloom. He is unpretentious, although he is bluntly handsome, with olive complexion, and a compact build. He is "10 percent that is superficial and 90 percent that has to do with the depths and that is threatened by living. He is a very complicated individual. He is a very, very morose, deeply feeling, hardworking artist- he takes a lot from within himself - but always, no matter how successful he is, he feels he is going to fall into those depths." 1 Bleckner first exhibited his work in New York in 1974. The following year he was given his first one-man show; he was included in the 1975 Whitney Biennial.. Since about 1985 has addressed many of his paintings to the subject of AIDS- both documenting it as a historical phenomenon and commemorating specific individuals who have died. Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California. Bio sourced from the Archives of askArt. Sources include: Ross Bleckner's Mood Indigo by Lisa Liebmann, in ARTnews, May 1993...

Ross Bleckner (American, b. 1949) Untitled Graphite on Paper 13 3/4 x 11 in. Ross Bleckner grew up in Hewlett, Long Island, New York; drawing all the time without being aware that o...

Signer upper right, 'Craemer' for Kurt Craemer (German, 1912-1961) and dated 1954. Born in Saarbrucken, Craemer first attended the Academy of Cologne where he worked under Friedrich Ahlers-Hesterman in 1928. He then traveled to Paris with his teacher, where he was introduced to the work of Henri Matisse. From 1930-33, Craemer lived in Düsseldorf where he continued his studies at the Art Academy under Paul Klee. With the Nazi's ascent to power late that year, Craemer moved to Italy and lived there at the Art colony in Ischia until the end of the war when he moved to Positano. Throughout the 1950's, Kurt Craemer continued to live in Italy exhibited with success internationally, including at the Venice Biennale...

"My work principally consists of deeply abstracted figure compositions--intuitive constructions that begin with random marks establishing larger masses of torsos, heads, and limbs in an undefined setting. The emphasis is almost purely on intuition. The figures are born of their surrounding environment, emerging only partially and fugitively from the layers of pigment. A narrative is evident but never overt. A crown, a shield, a boat, a wheel. Though the subject has recently coalesced around my reading of Dante and Shakespeare, the settings remain extremely vague- a beach, an interior, a woodland. The paintings are, in the end, meditations on the relationship between the protagonists in a wordless drama. In my paintings, I use a cold wax medium combined with dry pigments, oil paint, and embedded fragments of burlap. The surfaces eventually build up into a dense, rugged terrain." --Thaddeus Radell