Laura Manss Matarazzo

Santa Cruz Boardwalk Railroad Trestle Bridge, Vintage Figurative Landscape

1975

Vibrant figurative seascape of a beach in Mazatlan, Mexico with several figures and a catamaran reflecting beautifully in the shallow water by William A. Corbett (American. 1914-1960). Titled "Beach- Mazatlan" on verso. Signed "William Corbett" in lower left corner. Presented in a simple wood frame, with a double mat of off-white silk and royal blue with plexiglass. Image size: 22”H x 14.75”L William A. Corbett began drawing at an early age. He constructed signs and displays for theaters and nightclubs around Pittsburg. He studied art with Vincent Nesbert at the Pittsburg Art Institute and with Robert Gwathmoy, Roy Hilton, and Robert Laper at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He also studied painting and sculpture at the Louisville Art Center. Corbett was in the Army Engineers at Fort Knox, Kentucky where he studied, practiced, and had exhibits with army artists there from 1941-1943. He was very much interested in materials and technique, content and style in painting. His favorite Artists were El Greco, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Renoir, Burchfield, and Andrew Wyeth, Jr. He studied two years at Boston museum School with Karl Zerbe, Daivid Aronson and others. He later designed and did art work for General Outdoor Advertising Co. In 1943, he married Ruth Osborne of Louisville and they had one son, Michael. In 1951 he moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his family. Exhibitions: Army Art Show--- 1st Prize in Landscape, 1942 Kentucky & southern Indiana Exhibition-- Honorable mentions for Fisherman's Curse 1949, Don Q...

Beautiful large-scale figurative landscape watercolor of a vibrant village scene with several people and a cow amongst interesting architecture by William Howard Knowles (American, 1...

Harvest Time The Hills of Mt Tamalpais near Lake Bon Tempe 1890s The Hills around San Rafael in the 19th century were a time of work and play as seen in this watercolor near Lake Bon...

Schooners on the Coast with Rocks Tide Pools and bird by Howard Garfield Gray Schooners in the mist by artist and illustrator Howard Garfield Gray (American, 19th-20th C). Watercolor...

TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 2 10 1/2 x 6 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by Lowy....

"Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working. 21 x 15 inches Watercolor on paper. c. 1938. Signed lower left. BIO David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road" in 1940. He was a War Artist Correspondent for both the State Department (the European and Asian fronts) and Life magazine from 1943 to 1946 and his work was featured in Life magazine regularly during the war and after until the end of his life. Also featured in Life in 1956 were drawings that Fredenthal had vividly recorded on his sketch pad, of the entire filming of the movie, The Pride and the Passion, starring Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, and Frank Sinatra, along the treacherous mountain passes of Spain. Though he was fiercely committed to an art that expressed deeply human social values and issues and was quite hostile to abstraction, he was friendly with a number of abstract artists such as David Smith, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Paul Feeley, and Herman Cherry.

"Tobacco Road" Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 19 1/4 x 11 1/2 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by ...

"Going to the Festival" WPA Ashcan 20th Century American Scene Modern Realism Daniel Celentano (1902 - 1980) "Going to the Festival," 14 1/2 x 10 1/2. Watercolor on paper, c. 1930s....