Modern Art Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

We are premiering the paintings of a just discovered French artist Jade Bocquillon. A gifted artist living in Provence in the South of France, The work of Jade Bocquillon evokes dee...

Dong Kingman "Chinese Theater, Los Angeles" 1965 Watercolor on Paper Sheet Size: 15 x 22 inches Framed Size: approx 19 x 26 inches Dong Kingman, the world-renowned artist and teacher, died in his sleep on May 12, 2000 at age 89 in his home in Manhattan. The cause was pancreatic cancer. Long acknowledged as an American watercolor master, he has received an extraordinary number of awards and honors throughout his 70-year career in the arts. Included are two Guggenheim fellowships in 1942 and 1943; the San Francisco Art Association First Purchase Prize, 1936; Audubon Artist Medal of Honor, 1946; Philadelphia Watercolor Club Joseph Pennel Memorial Medal, 1950; Metropolitan Museum of Art Award, and the National Academy Design 150th Anniversary Gold Medal Award, 1975. In 1987, the American Watercolor Society awarded Dong Kingman its highest honor, the Dolphin Medal, "for having made outstanding contributions to art especially to that of watercolor." His work is represented in the permanent collections of 50 museums and universities, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, Des Moines Art Center, Columbus Museum of Arts and Crafts, Brooklyn Museum and Hirshhorn Museum. Born in Oakland, California in 1911 of Chinese descent, Kingman moved to Hong Kong at age five. He studied art and calligraphy in his formative years at the Lingnan School. The painting master Szeto Wai had recently studied art in Paris and took a keen interest in young Dongs precocious talents. He taught him both Chinese classical and French Impressionist styles of painting. Kingman returned home to Oakland when he was 18 at the height of the Depression. He worked as a newsboy and dishwasher to make ends meet. When he was employed as a houseboy for the Drew family in San Francisco, he painted every spare moment. In a year, he created enough pictures to have a one-man show at the Art Center. It attracted the attention of San Francisco art critics who raved about Kingmans unique style. Wrote Junius Cravens of the San Francisco News: "That young Chinese artist is showing 20 of the freshest and most satisfying watercolors that have been seen hereabouts in many a day Kingman already has developed that universal quality which may place a sincere artist work above the limitations of either racial characteristics or schools. Kingmans art belongs to the world at large today." Dong Kingman became an overnight success. From 1936 to 1941, he was a project artist for WPA and became a pioneer for a new school of painting, the "California Style." His two Guggenheim fellowships enabled him to travel the country painting American scenes. His first one-man show in New York at Midtown Galleries in 1942 was well received in the media, including Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker and American Artist. M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco held a major exhibit of his watercolors in 1945. In 1951, Midtown presented a 10-year retrospective of his work. Time Magazine wrote, "At age 40, Kingman is one of the worlds best watercolorists." Other retrospectives, including Corcoran in Washington,D.C. an d Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio, were held for the artist. Kingman moved to Wildenstein (1958-1969) where he had successful exhibits in New York, London and Paris. Hammer Galleries exhibited his paintings in the 70s, and then the artist expanded his venues to the West Coast and Far East. During World War II, he served with the OSS in Washington, D.C. where he was a cartographer. After his honorable discharge, Kingman moved to Brooklyn Heights from San Francisco when he became a guest lecturer and then art instructor at Columbia University (1946-1958). Hunter College also appointed him instructor in watercolors and Chinese Art (1948-1953). His teaching career continued with the Famous Artists School, Westport, CT in 1953, joining such distinguished artists on the faculty as Will Barnet, Stuart Davis, Norman Rockwell and Ben Shahn. He also became a teaching member for 40 years for the Hewitt Painting Workshops, which conducts worldwide painting tours. He taught at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, was a member of its board, and received an honorary doctorate from the Academy. In 1954, the U.S. Department of State invited Kingman to go on a cultural exchange program tour around the world to give exhibitions and lectures and to meet local artists. When he came home, he presented the State Department with a 40-foot long report on a scroll, which later appeared in LIFE Magazine. One of Kingman's most treasured experiences was his invitation by the Ministry of Culture of the Peoples Republic of China to exhibit in that country in 1981. He was the first American artist to be accorded a one-man show since diplomatic relations resumed. More than 100,000 visitors attended his exhibitions in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou and the retrospective received critical acclaim from the Chinese press. Noted the China Daily Mail, "Just as the master painters of the Song Dynasty roamed about mountain and stream to capture the rhythm of nature, Dong Kingman traveled the world capturing the dynamism of modern lifefamiliar scenes have been transformed into a vibrant new vision of life through color schemes with rhythms that play over the entire surface of the picture. The wind swept skies which enliven his watercolors remind us of the pleinairism of the French Impressionists." Kingman, who has been fascinated with movies since seeing his first film "The Thief of Baghdad...

A wonderful example of Czobel’s most expressive drawing. Signed, lower right

Watercolor on paper Signed, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Bill Rice was considered by such luminaries as Rene Ricard to be one of the most important painters of urban life from his generation. Rice’s depictions of inner city gay men...

Ink and watercolor on paper 13.5 x 7.5 inches This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Bill Rice was considered by such luminaries as Rene Ricard to be one of the most important painters of urban life from his generation. Rice’s depictions of inner city gay men...

Gisella Loeffler "Going for a Stroll" c. 1919 Gouache on Paper Initialed Framed Size: approx 17 x 13 inches In a village filled with colorful characters, few Taos artists were as colorful as Gisella Loeffler [1900-1977]. From her handmade Austrian clothing and hand-painted furniture to whimsical paintings and letters written in multicolored crayon, joyful color defined the artist, who early on chose to use simply Gisella as her professional name and was known as such to everyone in Taos. 

In spite of her fame there—the Taos News once labeled her a Taos legend—Gisella is rarely included in scholarly discussions of the Taos Art Colony. This oversight is likely due to the naive quality of her work, in which children or childlike adults inhabit a simple, brightly colored world filled with happiness. The macabre, the sad, the tortured, the offensive—all have no place in Gisella’s paintings. Her naive style of work looks very different from that of the better-known early Taos artists. Yet both Gisella’s artwork and her interesting life command attention. Born in Austria, Gisella came to the United States with her family in 1908, settling in St. Louis, MO. After studying art at Washington University in St. Louis, she became a prominent member of the local art community, joining the St. Louis Art Guild as well as the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. In addition to creating posters for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Gisella won prizes from the Artists Guild of the Author’s League of America in 1919 and 1920 and from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1923. She also began working in textiles, including batik, to which she would return later in her career.  In the early 1920s Gisella married writer and music critic Edgar Lacher. A difficult character, Lacher may have chafed under Gisella’s success, for the couple divorced in the 1930s. Having seen a local exhibition of paintings by Taos artists Oscar Berninghaus (who was from St. Louis) and Ernest Blumenschein, Gisella felt drawn to Taos, which reminded her of the villages of her native Austria. In 1933 the single mother with two daughters, Undine and Aithra, moved to Taos, where she lived off and on for the rest of her life. She traveled frequently, spending extended periods in Mexico, South America, and California, but always returned to New Mexico. Gisella initially applied an Austro-Hungarian folk-art style to the Indian and Hispanic subjects that she found in New Mexico. In her early work she covered her surfaces with decorative floral and faunal motifs, and her images were flat with no attempt at rendering traditional one-point perspective. Eventually, though, Gisella developed her own style, often using children or childlike figures as subjects. Still, the influence of her native country’s folk art remained evident in her New Mexican, Mexican, and South American images. In 1938 Gisella moved briefly to Los Griegos, north of Albuquerque, to be closer to medical facilities for her eldest daughter, who was suffering from rheumatic fever. Two years later, she moved to California to participate in the war effort, painting camouflage and decals on airplanes for Lockheed. In California, Gisella broadened her range of artistic pursuits. She taught art privately, created illustrations for Scripts Magazine, and did interior design for private homes. She also designed greeting cards, a practice she continued after her return to New Mexico, where she created a series of Christmas cards.  Gisella began illustrating children’s books in 1941 when she collaborated on Franzi and Gizi with author Margery Bianco. Eventually she wrote and illustrated her own book, El Ekeko, in 1964. She also designed ceramics—her Happy Time Dinnerware, marketed by Poppy Trail...

Artist: Kiki Kogelnik, Austrian (1935 - 1997) Title: For the Bergers Year: 1966 Medium: Watercolor, signed, titled and dated verso Size: 29 in. x 23 in. (73.66 cm x 58.42 cm) Frame S...

Kostia Terechkovich, known as Constantin Terechkovich, was born on May 1, 1902 in the suburbs of Moscow, and died on June 12, 1978 In Monaco. He was a French painter and engraver of ...

ANDRE LHOTE "LA PLAGE" PASTEL, SIGNED FRANCE, C.1927 17.75 X 24 INCHES André Lhote 1885-1962 Lhote was born in Bordeaux, France in 1885. H...

Presenting an exceptional rare original oil pastel by American artist Ron Blumberg, from the artists "Psychological Series", 1948-1952. American...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member of the Art Students League. "The Happy Couple...

Presenting an original scratch board drawing by American artist Darren LeGallo. "Recherché de l'amour", is executed on scratch board, which is a whit...

Jirayr Hamparzoom Zorthian was born April 14, 1911 in Kutahya, Turkey, of Armenian parents. At the age of three, he showed considerable talent in drawing and painting. Zorthian ...

An original watercolor by Hungarian artist Gertrude Klaris. Klaris worked in oils but pramrily in mixed media works on paper, much of her style is akin to her love of stained glass. ...

An exceptional original watercolor by American artist Byron Randall. "The Accordionist", is an original watercolor on heavy paper, signed, c.1945, ...

We are proud to present a just arrived series of original pen and ink and ink wash drawings by Austrian/American artist Gustav Rehberger. These works were acquired directly from the ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

Presenting an exceptional mixed media watercolor by Austrian/American artist Franz Bergmann. Bergmann studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, before settling in Northern California in the mid 1930s where he worked and taught until his death in 1970. The Fortune Teller...

Jirayr Zorthian(1911-2004), went through two Turkish massacres before age eight. He left Turkey at age nine with his family and spent a year in Padua, Italy, waiting for his visa to open to the United States. This period was very important in his life because his father took him to many cities in Europe and exposed him to great works of art. Zorthian arrived in the United States at the age of eleven and settled with his family in New Haven, Connecticut. He obtained his formal education there, after graduating from Yale in 1932, the Winchester Fellowship granted him a year and a half at the American Academy in Rome with travel and study throughout Europe. His art career branched into various directions on his return to the United States. As a mural painter his reputation was established. He has forty two (42) murals throughout the United States. Zorthian worked and taught painting at some of the finest art academies on the west coast including both the Chouinard Art Institute and the Otis Art Institute. "A Day at the Beach...

Jirayr Zorthian(1911-2004), went through two Turkish massacres before age eight. He left Turkey at age nine with his family and spent a year in Padua, Italy, waiting for his visa to...