1950s Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Vibrant portrait entitled "King of the Blues" by John Martin Socha (American, 1913-1983). Bold and angular, this piece depicts an African-American man wearing a crown. Given the date of the piece (1955), it is likely a reference to B. B. King, who began topping the Billboard charts in 1953. The portrait is slightly abstracted, with ornamentation that adds detail and depth. Signed and dated "Socha 1955" in the lower left corner. Presented in a wood frame with a linen mat. Frame size: 17.5"H x 14.75"W Image size: 9.5"H x 6.5"W John Martin Socha (American, 1913-1983) was a painter and teacher from St. Paul, Minnesota. As a teenager, Socha studied with Diego Rivera and attended the Minneapolis School of Art. He later worked as a WPA artist in the 1930s, and Rivera’s influence can be seen in his murals. Socha then served in the US Army from 1943-1946 before attending the University of Minnesota in 1947. Socha’s work has won many awards and is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Exhibited: Minnesota State Fair, 1938-40 (prize), 1941 (prize), 1942; Minneapolis Women's Club, 1938-42 (prize); Minneapolis IA, 1938-41, 1942 (prize), 1943-46; AIC, 1941-42; MMA, 1941-42; WMAA, 1942; NGA, 1940, 1942; Guatemala City, 1940; Mexico City, 1942; Walker Art Center, 1938, 1940, 1949 (prize); Davenport Municipal Art Gal., 1941; St Paul Art Gal., 1938-42; Denver Art Mus.; Univ. Wisconsin; Fed. Courts Bldg (solo), Hamline Univ. (solo), St. Catherine's Col. (solo), Public Library (solo), St. Paul Park H.S (solo), all in St. Paul; Guy Mayer Gal., NY (solo); Mankato State College, 1957 (solo). Member: Minnesota AA; Minnesota Art...

Watercolor and ink on paper of an abstract composition of brown, orange and blue shapes between black parallel lines throughout the the piece by Herbert Bayer (1900-1985). Presented in a custom black frame with all archival materials. Framed dimensions measure 17 ⅞ x 22 ⅝ x 1 inches. Image size is 10 ¼ x 15 ½ inches. Painting is clean and in very good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Herbert Bayer enjoyed a versatile sixty-year career spanning Europe and America that included abstract and surrealist painting, sculpture, environmental art, industrial design, architecture, murals, graphic design, lithography, photography and tapestry. He was one of the few “total artists” of the twentieth century, producing works that “expressed the needs of an industrial age as well as mirroring the advanced tendencies of the avant-garde.” One of four children of a tax revenue officer growing up in a village in the Austrian Salzkammergut Lake region, Bayer developed a love of nature and a life-long attachment to the mountains. A devotee of the Vienna Secession and the Vienna Workshops (Wiener Werkstätte) whose style influenced Bauhaus craftsmen in the 1920s, his dream of studying at the Academy of Art in Vienna was dashed at age seventeen by his father’s premature death. In 1919 Bayer began an apprenticeship with architect and designer, Georg Schmidthamer, where he produced his first typographic works. Later that same year he moved to Darmstadt, Germany, to work at the Mathildenhöhe Artists’ Colony with architect Emanuel Josef Margold of the Viennese School. As his working apprentice, Bayer first learned about the design of packages – something entirely new at the time – as well as the design of interiors and graphics of a decorative expressionist style, all of which later figured in his professional career. While at Darmstadt, he came across Wassily Kandinsky’s book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and learned of the new art school, the Weimar Bauhaus, in which he enrolled in 1921. He initially attended Johannes Itten’s preliminary course, followed by Wassily Kandinsky’s workshop on mural painting. Bayer later recalled, “The early years at the Bauhaus in Weimar became the formative experience of my subsequent work.” Following graduation in 1925, he was appointed head of the newly-created workshop for print and advertising at the Dessau Bauhaus that also produced the school’s own print works. During this time he designed the “Universal” typeface emphasizing legibility by removing the ornaments from letterforms (serifs). Three years later he left the Bauhaus to focus more on his own artwork, moving to Berlin where he worked as a graphic designer in advertising and as an artistic director of the Dorland Studio advertising agency. (Forty years later he designed a vast traveling exhibition, catalog and poster -- 50 Jahre Bauhaus -- shown in Germany, South America, Japan, Canada and the United States.) In pre-World War II Berlin he also pursued the design of exhibitions, painting, photography and photomontage, and was art director of Vogue magazine in Paris. On account of his previous association with the Bauhaus, the German Nazis removed his paintings from German museums and included him among the artists in a large exhibition entitled Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) that toured German and Austrian museums in 1937. His inclusion in that exhibition and the worsening political conditions in Nazi Germany prompted him to travel to New York that year with Marcel Breuer, meeting with former Bauhaus colleagues, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy to explore the possibilities of employment after immigration to the United States. In 1938 Bayer permanently relocated to the United States, settling in New York where he had a long and distinguished career in practically every aspect of the graphic arts, working for drug companies, magazines, department stores, and industrial corporations. In 1938 he arranged the exhibition, “Bauhaus 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art, followed later by “Road to Victory” (1942, directed by Edward Steichen), “Airways to Peace” (1943) and “Art in Progress” (1944). Bayer’s designs for “Modern Art in Advertising” (1945), an exhibition of the Container Corporation of America (CAA) at the Art Institute of Chicago, earned him the support and friendship of Walter Paepcke, the corporation’s president and chairman of the board. Paepcke, whose embrace of modern currents and design changed the look of American advertising and industry, hired him to move to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946 as a design consultant transforming the moribund mountain town into a ski resort and a cultural center. Over the next twenty-eight years he became an influential catalyst in the community as a painter, graphic designer, architect and landscape designer, also serving as a design consultant for the Aspen Cultural Center. In the summer of 1949 Bayer promoted through poster design and other design work Paepcke’s Goethe Bicentennial Convocation attended by 2,000 visitors to Aspen and highlighted by the participation of Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Rubenstein, Jose Ortega y Gasset and Thornton Wilder. The celebration, held in a tent designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, led to the establishment that same year of the world-famous Aspen Music Festival and School regarded as one of the top classical music venues in the United States, and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in (now the Aspen Institute), promoting in Paepcke’s words “the cross fertilization of men’s minds.” In 1946 Bayer completed his first architecture design project in Aspen, the Sundeck Ski Restaurant, at an elevation of 11,300 feet on Ajax Mountain. Three years later he built his first studio on Red Mountain, followed by a home which he sold in 1953 to Robert O. Anderson, founder of the Atlantic Richfield Company who became very active in the Aspen Institute. Bayer later designed Anderson’s terrace home in Aspen (1962) and a private chapel for the Anderson family in Valley Hondo, New Mexico (1963). Transplanting German Bauhaus design to the Colorado Rockies, Bayer created along with associate architect, Fredric Benedict, a series of buildings for the modern Aspen Institute complex: Koch Seminar Building (1952), Aspen Meadows guest chalets and Center Building (both 1954), Health Center and Aspen Meadows Restaurant (Copper Kettle, both 1955). For the grounds of the Aspen Institute in 1955 Bayer executed the Marble Garden and conceived the Grass Mound, the first recorded “earthwork” environment In 1973-74 he completed Anderson Park for the Institute, a continuation of his fascination with environmental earth art. In 1961 he designed the Walter Paepcke Auditorium and Memorial Building, completing three years later his most ambitious and original design project – the Musical Festival Tent for the Music Associates of Aspen. (In 2000 the tent was replaced with a design by Harry Teague.) One of Bayer’s ambitious plans from the 1950s, unrealized due to Paepcke’s death in 1960, was an architectural village on the outskirts of the Aspen Institute, featuring seventeen of the world’s most notable architects – Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Minoru Yamasaki, Edward Durrell Stone and Phillip Johnson – who accepted his offer to design and build houses. Concurrent with Bayer’s design and consultant work while based in Aspen for almost thirty years, he continued painting, printmaking, and mural work. Shortly after relocating to Colorado, he further developed his “Mountains and Convolutions” series begun in Vermont in 1944, exploring nature’s fury and repose. Seeing mountains as “simplified forms reduced to sculptural surface in motion,” he executed in 1948 a series of seven two-color lithographs (edition of 90) for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Colorado’s multi-planal typography similarly inspired Verdure, a large mural commissioned by Walter Gropius for the Harkness Commons Building at Harvard University (1950), and a large exterior sgraffito mural for the Koch Seminar Building at the Aspen Institute (1953). Having exhausted by that time the subject matter of “Mountains and Convulsions,” Bayer returned to geometric abstractions which he pursued over the next three decades. In 1954 he started the “Linear Structure” series containing a richly-colored balance format with bands of sticks of continuously modulated colors. That same year he did a small group of paintings, “Forces of Time,” expressionist abstractions exploring the temporal dimension of nature’s seasonal molting. He also debuted a “Moon and Structure” series in which constructed, architectural form served as the underpinning for the elaboration of color variations and transformations. Geometric abstraction likewise appeared his free-standing metal sculpture, Kaleidoscreen (1957), a large experimental project for ALCOA (Aluminum Corporation of America) installed as an outdoor space divider on the Aspen Meadows in the Aspen Institute complex. Composed of seven prefabricated, multi-colored and textured panels, they could be turned ninety degrees to intersect and form a continuous plane in which the panels recomposed like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He similarly used prefabricated elements for Articulated Wall, a very tall free-standing sculpture commissioned for the Olympic Games in Mexico...

Beautiful still life drawing by American artist, Lloyd Raymond Ney (1893-1964). Ink on paper, 14.5 x 21 inches; 25.5 x 31.5 inches framed. Excellent condition with no damage or restoration. Signed lower right. Birth place: Friedenburg, PA. Addresses: New Hope, PA, 1925-64 Profession: Painter, lecturer, teacher Studied: PAFA with H. McCarter, 1914 -18 (Cresson Scholarship; traveled in Europe 1918-21; Paris in 1924) Exhibited: AIC, 1937; Guggenheim Museum, 1941-56; PAFA Ann., 1941, 1951; numerous group shows in Europe. Work: Guggenheim Museum, NYC. WPA commission, 1941, mural for New London, Ohio Post Office (Citizens of New London petitioned WPA administrator Edward Bruce to allow Ney to paint the mural) Comments: Abstract painter. He spent many years in Paris, where he was friendly with Pascin, Foujita, Frieske, H.O. Tanner, W. Pach and Roger Fry...

Beautiful gouache of the 50s representing an agricultural scene. It is a tapestry project by Guignebert. Agriculture - Animals

Scenography is an original drawing in pencil on creamy paper, realized by Russian scenographer Eugène Berman in 1950s. Monogrammed at the bottom: E.B. In good conditions. The artw...

Detailed watercolor of Monument Valley by Albert DeRome (American, 1885-1959). The viewer is looking out over the valley from a high vantage point, with towering mesas in the distance. In the foreground, there are some shrubs and a small tree to the right side of the composition. DeRome has created a sense of vast distance by rendering the far background with a hazy quality while keeping the foreground in clear focus. Signed "Albert DeRome" in the lower right corner. Inscription on verso as a gift to the artist's mother. Purchased from the estate of the artist Patterson's Antiques, Los Gatos. Presented in a wood frame with a new white mat. Image size: 5.75"H x 8"W Frame size: 11"H x 14"W Born in Cayucos, California, Albert De Rome (American, 1885-1959) became a California landscape painter, especially of natural landscapes formations, seascapes and marine scenes near Carmel and Monterey. Usually his palette was bright in both oil and watercolor, but he did the occasional nocturne. Scholars have compared his painting style and subjects to those of Thomas Hill and Albert Bierstadt. However, Albert De Rome never affiliated with any formal group of painters, although he had many close friends including Percy Gray, Gunnar Widforss and Will Sparks. As a young man, Thomas De Rome worked at the Congress Spring Hotel in Saratoga, and in San Francisco at the Globe Foundry, owned by an uncle. He studied art under Arthur Mathews, John Stanton and Lorenzo Latimer...

Landscape is an original drawing in Gouache, realized by the artist Antoine Mayo (1905-1990) in the 1950s. Hand-Signed. In good condition. Antoine Mayo...

Tiger is a beautiful original drawing in pencil on ivory-colored paper realized in 1958 by the German artist Wilhelm Lorenz, also known as Willi Lorenz. Hand-signed and dated in pe...

To see our other Architectural Drawings, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller." V A Hards (British, c. 1930-c. 2012) Design for Mod...

Abstract Cityscape Mid 20th Century Modern Cubist Work on Paper Drawing Ariel 11 x 4 1/2 inches. Framed by Heydenryk. Provenance: Gary Snyder Fine Art B...

Abstract Composition is a beautiful original drawing in china ink and watercolor, realized by an unknown artist and signed "La Cabane". Hand dated 1951. In very good conditions. Sh...

Pastel work on paper without frame

Black and white etching on watercolor paper signed dated

JEAN [HANS] ARP 1886 –1966 Strasbourg, France 1886–1966 Basel, Switzerland (German/French) Title: French Form Forme Francaise, 1959 Technique: Hand Signed Pencil Drawing on Wove P...

Brown, Carlyle (American, 1919-1963). TABLE STILL LIFE WITH GLASSES. Ink and wash on paper, 1952. Signed and dated '52, lower right. 9 1/2 x 13 i...

Sleeping Cats is an original carbon pencil drawing realized by Giselle Halff (1899-1971) in 1957. Not signed, is dated on the lower right margin" 7-12-57 " Good conditions. Giselle...

To see our other Architectural Drawings, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller." V A Hards (British, c. 193...

Seascape is an original drawing in watercolor on paper, realized by the artist Antoine Mayo (1905-1990) in the 1950s. Hand-Signed on the lower right marg...

Mid Century Modern East Bay I Abstracted Landscape by Erle Loran Dynamic mid century abstracted geometric landscape drawing of the East Bay California landscape by Erle Loran (Ameri...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1950. A graphite drawing of a young woman, shown nude and seated with her chin cupped in...

Mid Century Modern East Bay II Abstracted Landscape by Erle Loran Dynamic mid century abstracted geometric landscape drawing of the East Bay California lands...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1950. A graphite study of a young woman shown nude and seated in an armchair. Winner of...

Abstract expressionist watercolor painting of blue, black, orange, and green signed by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968). Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials an...

The Holy Family is an Original Drawing in Pastel realized by Giselle Halff (1899-1971). Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right margin. Good conditions. Giselle Halff (1899-...

Here for your consideration is a very finely executed watercolor by the New England artist, John Cuthbert Hare of fishing boats dockside in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Condition is excellent. Signed by the artist lower right. Circa 1950. The artwork is framed in custom barn wood with a narrow linen liner. The artwork is under glass. Overall framed measurements are 16.5 by 14.5 inches. Provenance: Massachusetts estate. New England painter John Cuthbert Hare was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1908 and studied commercial art at the Pratt Institute in New York City and later at the Art Students League also in New York City. He also studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York followed by employment with the Hearst Newspaper Corporation. For a number of years after his marriage in 1933, Hare and his wife traveled throughout the United States and Europe. Hare was a member of the Provincetown Art Colony, Cape Cod, Massachusetts and was to become known as the "Dean of Cape Cod Artists...

Modern original oil pastel on archival paper of a rooftop view of buildings and New York harbor by the Swedish born American artist, Carl Sprinchorn. ...

An original oil pastel on paper drawing by Benjamin Benno, American (1901 - 1980) measuring 19 x 25 inches. By the early 1930s he had established a reputation as a member of the inte...

An original oil pastel on paper drawing by Benjamin Benno, American (1901 - 1980) measuring 19 x 25 inches. By the early 1930s he had established a reputation as a member of the international avant-garde and exhibited with the most significant European artists including Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Hans Arp, and Fernand Léger. Pablo Picasso sponsored Benno's first one-man show in Paris in 1934. Still Life with Mandolin...

To see our other Architectural Drawings, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller." V A Hards (British, c. 1930-c. 2012) An Architectur...

Abstract Composition is an original Ink and Watercolor drawing on paper applied realized by Maurice André in the Mid-20th Century. Good conditions. Han...

Nude of Woman is an Original China Ink Drawing realized by Pino della Selva (1904-1987). Good condition included a white cardboard passpartout (50x35 cm). Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right corner. Pino della Selva (pseudonym of Pino Giuffrida ) is a painter, sculptor , designer and engraver ( etching and woodcut ), also poet and art critic , born on January 3, 1904in Catania ( Sicily ), settled in Paris in 1931 (lived at 31, rue La Bruyère )died in 1987 in Paris. His pictorial work, which initially turned towards themes of a social nature ( Blind to Work in 1925, Workers in 1932) comparable to those of the French Édouard Pignon and André Fougeron...

Venice is an original modern artwork realized by Zoran Mušic in 1959. Mixed colored pastel drawing. Includes frame. Hand signed and dated on the lower m...

Half-strechted Woman is an Original China Ink Drawing realized by Pino della Selva (1904-1987). Good condition included a white cardboard passpartout (35x50 cm). Hand-signed by the artist on the lower left corner. Pino della Selva (pseudonym of Pino Giuffrida) is a painter , sculptor , designer and engraver ( etching and woodcut ), also poet and art critic , born on January 3, 1904 in Catania ( Sicily ), settled in Paris in 1931 (lived at 31, rue La Bruyère )died in 1987 in Paris. His pictorial work, which initially turned towards themes of a social nature ( Blind to Work in 1925, Workers in 1932) comparable to those of the French Édouard Pignon and André Fougeron...

Nudes is an original China ink drawing on paper realized by Lucien Coutaud in the Mid-20th Century. Hand-signed. Good conditions. The artwork is depi...

Sz: 13 1/4"H x 20 1/8"W Alexander Warren Montel (1921-2002) Fashion illustrator for House of Lanvin Paris in the 1950s featured in Harper's Bazaar

Nude is an original modern artwork realized by Carlo Mattioli in 1958. Mixed colored pastel drawing on canvas. Hand signed and dated on the lower marg...

Portrait of Dog is an original pencil drawing realized by an artist of the mid 20th Century. Good condition, no signature. On a white cardboard.

Portrait is an original drawing in pen on paper realized in 1950 by Anonymous Artist of the XX century. In very good condition, except for folding. The artwork represents the portr...

Figures With The Trees is an original watercolored drawing on paper realized by an Anonymous artist in the mid-20th Century. Titled on the lower. Good conditions. The delicate poe...

Abstract Composition is an original watercolored drawing on paper realized by a French Anonymous artist in 1957. Dated on the lower. Good conditions. The delicate poetic expressio...

Dramatic desert landscape by Betty Jenkins (American, 20th Century). Red rock formations stretch across the center of the composition, executed with skil...

Work on paper with frame + glass; total size 68x86 cm

Work on paper with frame + glass; total size 52 x 68.2 cm

"My Fair Lady" 1958 West End Theatre Costume Drawing Mid 20th Century Modern Cecil Beaton (1904 – 1980) "My Fair Lady," Pen and ink on paper. ...

A couple is an original drawing in china ink on paper realized in 1956 by Erhard Klepper (1906-1980). Hand-signed and dated on the higher margin The state of preservation is good ...

Milton Clark Avery (1885 - 1965) March Avery in a Beret, 1951 Black crayon and graphite on cream wove paper 11 x 8 3/8 inches Signed and dated lower left; ...

Fletcher Martin (1904 - 1979) Sleigh Ride, Woodstock, New York circa 1955 Watercolor on paper 14 x 11 inches Signed lower right Provenance: James Cox Galler...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1955. Winner of the Prix Othon Friesz, Victor di Gesu first attended the Los Angeles Art...

Sterndale Bennett Honor 1886-1975 Watercolour artist, born in Watford, she married into the famous family noted for its composers and for its military members. As an army wife she s...

Bird is an original charcoal drawing realized by Giselle Halff (1899-1971) in 1959. Hand signed and dated on the lower right margin. Good conditions. Giselle Halff (1899-1971) was ...

Portrait is an original pen drawing realized by Georges Vernotte. Good condition on yellowed paper. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right corner.

To see our other Architectural Drawings, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller." V A Hards (British, c. 1930-c. 2012) An Architectur...

This is a masterfully rendered and brilliantly designed scene from the Arabian Nights. page 33 from Random House. We are not sure if this is by Gustaf Tenggren. However, there are su...

Stamped, verso, with estate stamp for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and created circa 1950. Winner of the Prix Othon Friesz, Victor di Gesu first attended the Los Angeles Art...

The Pinks and the Blues Watercolor, pen and ink on paper, 1954 Signed and dated in ink lower left, titled in pencil verso. Provenance: Gift of the Artist Privat...

Portrait of an Old Man is an original drawing realized by Benn (Bencjon Rabinowicz) in mid-20th century . Pencil on paper, hand signed on the lower...

Welcome to the wonderfully delightful mind of Ludwig Bemelmans. With a few quick lines, Bemelmans captures the essence of a subject. In this work, the artist portrays a distinguished...

abstract, yellow ,orange,grey,geometric,1954 Edgardo CORBELLI (Turin, 1918 - 1989) From the traditional composition of the 1930s, the painting of Corbelli leads to technical and exp...