Late 20th Century Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Artist: Frank Rakoncay (American, 1936-1998) Title: "Woman in Flight" *Signed by Rakoncay in pencil lower left. It is also signed again lower right Circa: 1980 Medium: Original Oil P...

Roy Lichtenstein Handwritten note on card ink on paper hand signed by Roy Lichtenstein The card reads "Thank you so much for the wonderful prints Very kind of you to send them to me Best regards, Roy Lichtenstein This card depicts Roy Lichtenstein's American Indian Theme II (from American Indian Theme Series), 1980, Woodcut in colors on Suzuki handmade paper Provenance: This card was acquired from Dan Pope, a longtime CBS photographer and cameraman, who had amassed a superb collection of autographs by visual artists over many decades. This work has been elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality wood frame under UV plexiglass. Measurements: Framed 14.75 inches vertical by 11.5 horizontal by 1.5 inches depth Card (image) Roy Lichtenstein Biography Roy Lichtenstein was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, and after his initial triumph in the early 1960s, he went on to create an oeuvre of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention. Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City, the first of two children born to Milton and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein. Milton Lichtenstein (1893–1946) was a successful real estate broker, and Beatrice Lichtenstein (1896–1991), a homemaker, had trained as a pianist, and she exposed Roy and his sister Rénee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. Roy showed artistic and musical ability early on: he drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager, and spent many hours in the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. He played piano and clarinet, and developed an enduring love of jazz, frequenting the nightspots in Midtown to hear it. Lichtenstein attended the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high and high school, and was graduated in 1940. That summer he studied painting and drawing from the model at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh. In September he entered Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in the College of Education. His early artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Guernica (1937; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), then on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art, was his favorite painting. Even as an undergraduate, Lichtenstein objected to the notion that one set of lines (one person’s drawings) “was considered brilliant, and somebody’s else’s, that may have looked better to you, was considered nothing by almost everyone.”i Lichtenstein’s questioning of accepted canons of taste was encouraged by Hoyt L. Sherman, a teacher whom he maintained was the person who showed him how to see and whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own. In February 1943, Lichtenstein was drafted, and he was sent to Europe in 1945. As part of the infantry, he saw action in France, Belgium and Germany. He made sketches throughout his time in Europe and, after peace was declared there, he intended to study at the Sorbonne. Lichtenstein arrived in Paris in October 1945 and enrolled in classes in French language and civilization, but soon learned that his father was gravely ill. He returned to New York in January 1946, a few weeks before Milton Lichtenstein died. In the spring of that year, Lichtenstein went back to OSU to complete his BFA and in the fall he was invited to join the faculty as an instructor. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky (1921–80), who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland where Lichtenstein had exhibited his work. While he was teaching, Lichtenstein worked on his master’s degree, which he received in 1949. During his second stint at OSU, Lichtenstein became closer to Sherman, and began teaching his method on how to organize and unify a composition. Lichtenstein remained appreciative of Sherman’s impact on him. He gave his first son the middle name of “Hoyt,” and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lichtenstein began working in series and his iconography was drawn from printed images. His first sustained theme, intimate paintings and prints in the vein of Paul Klee that poked lyrical fun at medieval knights, castles and maidens, may well have been inspired by a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Lichtenstein then took an ironic look at nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books, creating Cubist interpretations of cowboys and Indians spiked with a faux-primitive whimsy. As with his most celebrated Pop paintings of the 1960s, Lichtenstein gravitated toward what he would characterize as the “dumbest” or “worst” visual item he could find and then went on to alter or improve it. In the 1960s, commercial art was considered beneath contempt by the art world; in the early 1950s, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, nineteenth-century American narrative and genre paintings were at the nadir of their reputation among critics and collectors. Paraphrasing, particularly the paraphrasing of despised images, became a paramount feature of Lichtenstein’s art. Well before finding his signature mode of expression in 1961, Lichtenstein called attention to the artifice of conventions and taste that permeated art and society. What others dismissed as trivial fascinated him as classic and idealized—in his words, “a purely American mythological subject matter.”ii Lichtenstein’s teaching contract at OSU was not renewed for the 1951–52 academic year, and in the autumn of 1951 he and Isabel moved to Cleveland. Isabel Lichtenstein became an interior decorator specializing in modern design, with a clientele drawn from wealthy Cleveland families. Whereas her career blossomed, Lichtenstein did not continue to teach at the university level. He had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman, furniture designer, window dresser and rendering mechanical dials for an electrical instrument company. In response to these experiences, he introduced quirkily rendered motors, valves and other mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. In 1954, the Lichtensteins’ first son, David, was born; two years later, their second child, Mitchell, followed. Despite the relative lack of interest in his work in Cleveland, Lichtenstein did place his work with New York dealers, which always mattered immensely to him. He had his first solo show at the Carlebach Gallery in New York in 1951, followed by representation with the John Heller Gallery from 1952 to 1957. To reclaim his academic career and get closer to New York, Lichtenstein accepted a position as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, in the northern reaches of the state. He was hired to teach industrial design, beginning in September 1957. Oswego turned out to be more geographically and aesthetically isolated than Cleveland ever was, but the move was propitious, for both his art and his career. Lichtenstein broke away from representation to a fully abstract style, applying broad swaths of pigment to the canvas by dragging the paint across its surface with a rag wrapped around his arm. At the same time, Lichtenstein was embedding comic-book characters figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in brushy, expressionistic backgrounds. None of the proto-cartoon paintings from this period survive, but several pencil and pastel studies from that time, which he kept, document his intentions. Finally, when he was in Oswego, Lichtenstein met Reginald Neal, the new head of the art department at Douglass College, the women’s college of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The school was strengthening and expanding its studio art program, and when Neal needed to add a faculty member to his department, Lichtenstein was invited to apply for the job. Lichtenstein was offered the position of assistant professor, and he began teaching at Douglass in September 1960. At Douglass, Lichtenstein was thrown into a maelstrom of artistic ferment. With New York museums and galleries an hour away, and colleagues Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts at Douglass and Allan Kaprow and George Segal at Rutgers, the environment could not help but galvanize him. In June 1961, Lichtenstein returned to the idea he had fooled around with in Oswego, which was to combine cartoon characters from comic books with abstract backgrounds. But, as Lichtenstein said, “[I]t occurred to me to do it by mimicking the cartoon style without the paint texture, calligraphic line, modulation—all the things involved in expressionism.”iii Most famously, Lichtenstein appropriated the Benday dots, the minute mechanical patterning used in commercial engraving, to convey texture and gradations of color—a stylistic language synonymous with his subject matter. The dots became a trademark device forever identified with Lichtenstein and Pop Art. Lichtenstein may not have calibrated the depth of his breakthrough immediately but he did realize that the flat affect and deadpan presentation of the comic-strip panel blown up and reorganized in the Sherman-inflected way “was just so much more compelling”iv than the gestural abstraction he had been practicing. Among the first extant paintings in this new mode—based on comic strips and illustrations from advertisements—were Popeye and Look Mickey, which were swiftly followed by The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball and Step-on Can with Leg. Kaprow recognized the energy and radicalism of these canvases and arranged for Lichtenstein to show them to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Castelli was New York’s leading dealer in contemporary art, and he had staged landmark exhibitions of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in 1958 and Frank Stella in 1960. Karp was immediately attracted to Lichtenstein’s paintings, but Castelli was slower to make a decision, partly on account of the paintings’ plebeian roots in commercial art, but also because, unknown to Lichtenstein, two other artists had recently come to his attention—Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist—and Castelli was only ready for one of them. After some deliberation, Castelli chose to represent Lichtenstein, and the first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at the gallery from February 10 to March 3, 1962. The show sold out and made Lichtenstein notorious. By the time of Lichtenstein’s second solo exhibition at Castelli in September 1963, his work had been showcased in museums and galleries around the country. He was usually grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. Taken together, their work was viewed as a slap in the face to Abstract Expressionism and, indeed, the Pop artists shifted attention away from many members of the New York School. With the advent of critical and commercial success, Lichtenstein made significant changes in his life and continued to investigate new possibilities in his art. After separating from his wife, he moved from New Jersey to Manhattan in 1963; in 1964, he resigned from his teaching position at Douglass to concentrate exclusively on his work. The artist also ventured beyond comic book subjects, essaying paintings based on oils by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso, as well as still lifes and landscapes. Lichtenstein became a prolific printmaker and expanded into sculpture, which he had not attempted since the mid-1950s, and in both two- and three-dimensional pieces, he employed a host of industrial or “non-art” materials, and designed mass-produced editioned objects that were less expensive than traditional paintings and sculpture. Participating in one such project—the American Supermarket show in 1964 at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, for which he designed a shopping bag—Lichtenstein met Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939), a gallery employee, whom he married in 1968. The late 1960s also saw Lichtenstein’s first museum surveys: in 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum initiated a traveling retrospective, in 1968 the Stedelijk Musem in Amsterdam presented his first European retrospective, and in 1969 he had his first New York retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Wanting to grow, Lichtenstein turned away from the comic book subjects that had brought him prominence. In the late 1960s his work became less narrative and more abstract, as he continued to meditate on the nature of the art enterprise itself. He began to explore and deconstruct the notion of brushstrokes—the building blocks of Western painting. Brushstrokes are conventionally conceived as vehicles of expression, but Lichtenstein made them into a subject. Modern artists have typically maintained that the subject of a painting is painting itself. Lichtenstein took this idea one imaginative step further: a compositional element could serve as the subject matter of a work and make that bromide ring true. The search for new forms and sources was even more emphatic after 1970, when Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein bought property in Southampton, New York, and made it their primary residence. During the fertile decade of the 1970s, Lichtenstein probed an aspect of perception that had steadily preoccupied him: how easily the unreal is validated as the real because viewers have accepted so many visual conceptions that they don’t analyze what they see. In the Mirror series, he dealt with light and shadow upon glass, and in the Entablature series, he considered the same phenomena by abstracting such Beaux-Art architectural elements as cornices, dentils, capitals and columns. Similarly, Lichtenstein created pioneering painted bronze sculpture that subverted the medium’s conventional three-dimensionality and permanence. The bronze forms were as flat and thin as possible, more related to line than volume, and they portrayed the most fugitive sensations—curls of steam, rays of light and reflections on glass. The steam, the reflections and the shadow were signs for themselves that would immediately be recognized as such by any viewer. Another entire panoply of works produced during the 1970s were complex encounters with Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Lichtenstein expanded his palette beyond red, blue, yellow, black, white and green, and invented and combined forms. He was not merely isolating found images, but juxtaposing, overlapping, fragmenting and recomposing them. In the words of art historian Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein’s virtuosic compositions were “a rich dialogue of forms—all intuitively modified and released from their nominal sources.”v In the early 1980s, which coincided with re-establishing a studio in New York City, Lichtenstein was also at the apex of a busy mural career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had completed four murals; between 1983 and 1990, he created five. He also completed major commissions for public sculptures in Miami Beach, Columbus, Minneapolis, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore. Lichtenstein created three major series in the 1990s, each emblematic of his ongoing interest in solving pictorial problems. The Interiors, mural-sized canvases inspired by a miniscule advertisement in an Italian telephone...

Watercolor on heavy paper realized by Carlo Ravagnan in 1970s. Hand signed lower left. Excellent condition. Carlo Ravagnan was born in Udine on September 4, 1911, died in Venice i...

Allan D'Arcangelo Constellation, 1971 Acrylic on paper, mounted to canvas Hand signed and dated 1971 lower front Frame included Measurements: Framed: 23.75 x 23.75 x 1.25 inches Artw...

JEFF KOONS Original Flower drawing on Michael Jackson and Bubbles poster (Hand Signed), 1992 Drawing done in marker on offset lithograph 25 × 39 inches Hand signed and dated '92 in b...

LARRY HOROWITZ (American b. 1956) "Purple Mountains," 1988, pastel on paper Hand signed and dated L/R, "Horowitz '88," Dimensions sight 19 1/2" x 23", framed, 26 1/2" x 30 1/2". L...

Title: French Watercolor of Vibrant Square with Painter, Palm Trees, and Architecture by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper ...

Title: Provence Watercolor of Pont du Gard Roman Aqueduct & River Scene by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper Size: 12.25 x ...

Tempera and watercolor on cardboard realized by Sirio Pellegrini in 1970. Sirio Pellegrini, born in Rome on March 1, 1922, of Abruzzo origins (Capestrano), spent his childhood years...

Title: Provence Watercolor of Château des Baux & Sunlit Limestone Cliffs by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper Size: 12.25 x...

EILEEN SOPER (1905-1990) Pheasant Feeding Pencil Unframed, in conservation mount only 6 by 11.5 cm., 2 ¼ by 4 ½ in. (mount size 18 by 23 cm., 7 by 9 in.) Provenance: The artist’s...

Emily Mason So Slight a Film (from the Lehman Brothers art collection), 1978 Oil on paper Abstract Expressionist painting Signed and dated 'Emily Mason '78' bottom right in pencil Fr...

Title: French Watercolor of a Sunlit Mont Saint-Michel at Low Tide by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper Size: 11.25 x 13.5 ...

'Family Farm in France', gouache on art paper, by Michel Debiève (circa 1970s). An extremely endearing depiction of a French family farm, the delight is...

Vintage 20th Century Painting of Lush Green Ireland Village by Irish Artist, Liam Reilly Art measures 24 x 18 inches Frame measures 28 x 22 inches This stunning painting captures t...

Joyce Kozloff Tepoztlan II, 1973 Gouache and colored pencil on paper Signed, dated and titled twice: once on the back of the work (shown) and once on the original board which has bee...

Watercolor on paper sold with frame (wooden frame with glass) Total size with frame 33x43 cm

Theodore Waddell Midnight Angus Drawing #3 (Midwest, Cattle, Mid-Century, Prairie, Blue) Oil on Paper Year: 1990 Sheet Size: 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm) Mat Size: 33.5 x 43.5 in...

Charles Hinman Untitled Minimalist Drawing (Mid-Century Modern), 1980 Pastel on off-white wove paper Signed in pencil and dated by the artist on the lower-right front. Jeffrey Fuller...

Max Epstein, Canadian (1932 - 2002) - Miss Canada, Year: 1975, Medium: Color Pencil and Graphite on Paper, signed and dated, Size: 24 in. x 21 in. (60.96 cm x 53.34 cm)

Title: Corsica Watercolor of Vieux Port Bastia with Boats & Colorful Facades by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper Size: 11....

Abstract Geometric Composition Date: Second half of the 20th century Medium: Gouache on paper Dimensions: H 50 cm x W 65 cm approx. Description: Modular geometric structure with ove...

Juventus 1995-96 - The Embrace of Victory Artist: Marco Silombria (Savona, 1936 - Albissola, 2017) Medium: Charcoal on paper Dimensions: 101 x 72 cm Signed: Lower right, "Si...

'Parisian Street Scene', watercolour on art paper, by Roland DuBuc (circa 1970s). This artwork is a delightful depiction of a Parisian street which scales the hill to the neighbourhood of Montmartre, the home of the basilica of Sacré-Cœur. DuBuc's artworks serve as a love letter to the city of Paris and are recognised by his incredibly charming style. The signed artwork is in good overall condition and has been newly framed with anti-reflective glass. Please enjoy the many photos accompanying this listing. Upon request a video of the piece may be provided. About the Artist: Roland DuBuc (1924-1998), French artist, the sixth of 13 children and son of a construction worker. The very precariousness of the family's financial situation forced him to go to work at the age of 14. In extreme poverty, he moved to Rouen where he was lodged by the Salvation Army. During that time he struck up friendships with several artists who gave him advice and taught him techniques of drawing. He moved to other cities later where he met painters including, among others, Fred Pailhès...

Jean-Michel Basquiat Lounge Lizards 1979:
 Impossibly rare original hand-drafted flyer by Basquiat for a performance by his close friend, John Lurie & t...

Charming ink and pencil fashion sketch of a long pink overcoat with clasp by Paris fashion house Création Corine Marie, circa 1980. Includes original fabric swatch and designer's sta...

'The Family', gouache on fine art paper (1984), by Raymond Dèbieve. In a clear nod to Picasso's influence both stylistically and in terms of subject matter ...

Indian ink drawing on paper inspired by the works of Marino Marini, embellished with a beautiful frame, mis. est. cm. h.37x32x2.

Polaroid transfer drawing of a reclining male nude on Rive BFK paper by Mark Beard 9.5 x 7 inch image size 22 x 15 inch paper size Ed. 5/6, Polaroid Transfer on Rives BFK paper, unfr...

When the world thinks about the famous Group of Seven, this is likely the kind of image they recall—the quiet majesty of the Canadian wilderness. This lithograph by one of its youngest members, Alfred Joseph Casson is one of many classic landscapes he painted of the north—mountains, lakes, bare trees in the foreground rendered in his favoured bright palette of autumn colours—red, yellow, orange, a touch of green, and deep blue lakes against a cloudy white sky. Casson was an avid canoeist and spent many hours camping and drawing in northern Ontario often alongside fellow members of the Group. “I had to develop my own style. I began to dig out places of my own...” A. J. Casson He moved on to two commercial art firms in Toronto where he worked as an assistant to the artist Franklin Carmichael, one of the founding members of the renowned Group of Seven, (A group of Canadian landscape painters that included Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris and A. Y. Jackson.). Carmichael encouraged him to sketch and paint on his own. Casson was invited to join the Group of Seven in the 1920’s with whom he painted for years. Following their demise, he formed the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour...

Title: French Watercolor of St. Tropez Skyline with Bell Tower and Sea View by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper Size: 11.2...

Gary Bukovnik, American (1947 -) - Spring Bloom, Year: 1983, Medium: Watercolor on Paper, signed and dated in pencil lower right, Size: 45 x 71 in. (114.3 x 180.34 cm), Frame Size...

Josep Martinez Lozano - Arabs in Tetouan - Pencil drawing Drawing measurements 19x25 cm. Frame measurements 33x38 cm. Frame in poor condition. Josep Martínez Lozano was born in the ...

Watercolor on brightly colored paper, signed Gibor, with wooden frame mis.cm.h.65x56

A large minimal abstract painting on paper by Yasmin Brandolini. Artist: Yasmin Brandolini d'Adda, South African/Italian (1929 - ) Title: 17 Year: 1986 Medium: 40 x 60 in. (101.6 ...

Study for the chairlift (Anacapri) is a contemporary artwork realized by Ennio Calabria in 1965. Mixed colored watercolor on paper. Hand signed, dated and titled on the lower margi...

A large minimal abstract painting on paper by Yasmin Brandolini. Artist: Yasmin Brandolini d'Adda, South African/Italian (1929 - ) Title: B Year: 1984 Medium: Tempera on Paper, sig...

This Fortunato Depero wionderful serigraphy is a multiple of 250 specimens printed by the authorization of Museum of Depero in Rovereto (Italy). This i...

Firmado en la parte inferior por el artista Se presenta sin enmarcar la obra Medidas obra: 50 cm. de altura x 32 cm. de ancho Buen estado de conservación el de la obra ::::::::::...

Pedro Pablo 1998, by Celso Castro Black crayon on archival paper Image size: 40 H in. x 48 in. W Sheet size: 45 H in. x 59 in. W Unframed ____________ U...

Watercolor on heavy paper realized by Carlo Ravagnan in 1980. Hand signed lower left. Date on rear, Excellent condition.

A pair of fine hand painted botanical watercolour studies on silk of anemones by La Roche Laffitte. The works are signed bottom right. Both are titled. The silk has been mounted on h...

Title: French Watercolor of Seaside Scene with Beachgoers, Sailboats, and Architecture by Robert Lepine (French, 1929 - 2017) Signed: Yes Medium: Watercolor painting on artists paper...

Erotic Scene is a pen Drawing realized by Mino Maccari (1924-1989) in the 1970s. Hand-signed on the lower, with another drawing on the rear. Good condition. Mino Maccari (Siena, ...

Watercolor on heavy paper realized by Carlo Ravagnan in 1978. Hand signed lower right. Hand signed and dated on rear. Excellent condition.

This work features a photographic portrait of Helen Frankenthaler, taken by renowned musician and photographer Jim Arkatov, founder of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchester, and author of the 1998 book "The Creative Personality". The photograph is hand signed and dated '92 by Jim Arkatov. Framed alongside the photograph is a typed letter, hand signed in marker with a personal annotation ("Thanks again!!") by Helen Frankenthaler, thanking Mr. Arkatov for sending her glossy prints of his photograph and stating that she looks forward to seeing his book. Arkatov's original signed portrait, along with Frankenthaler's original signed letter, are elegantly framed in a museum quality wood frame under UV plexiglass. There is also a die-cut window in the back of the frame to reveal Arkatov's signature on the back of his photograph. Measurements: Framed 14.25 inches (vertical) by 19.75 inches (horizontal) by 1.75 inches (depth) Photographic portrait of Helen Frankenthaler: 9.25 inches (vertical) by 7.25 inches (horizontal) Letter from Frankenthaler to Arkatov: 7 inches (vertical) by 6.25 inches (horizontal) This collection was acquired from the Estate of Jim Arkatov. Below is an excerpt from his 2019 obituary in the Los Angeles Times: "...His was an immigrant’s story, a child from Russia who landed in San Francisco, befriended violinist Isaac Stern — whose fame was still to come — took up the cello and decided to pour his life into making music. James Arkatov found work with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and then with the philharmonic in San Francisco before coming to L.A. as a Hollywood studio musician who worked on movie soundtracks and backed up Ella Fitzgerald on some of her more memorable recordings, such as “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Books.” Amazed at the dazzling talent around him in Hollywood, he came up with a simple but lasting idea — form their own orchestra. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra made its debut on an April evening in 1968, as hundreds squeezed into the newly built Mark Taper Forum. Arkatov played cello as usual as the ensemble drifted through the works of Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn and other legends of the classics who’d written music specially for smaller orchestras. Arkatov, who lived long enough to see the orchestra celebrate its 50th anniversary, died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 98. “The orchestra represented a contextualized part of L.A. that had simply never been captured,” said his son, Alan Arkatov, the chair of the education and technology program at USC’s Rossier School of Education. “L.A. simply didn’t have this type of ensemble.” Arkatov was born in Odessa, Russia, on July 17, 1920, and moved around Europe before sailing with his family to San Francisco, where his father opened a photo studio. One of his early childhood friends was Stern, who would become an international star who performed on the world’s biggest stages. Arkatov, who began playing the cello when he was 9, formed a string quartet with Stern when they were teens. After stints as a cellist in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, Arkatov became a member of the NBC Orchestra, the studio musicians who supplied the soundtracks for the movies that kept Hollywood humming. Pulling from the talent of Hollywood like an NFL team on draft day, he cobbled together a roster capable of handling the delicate and nuanced music written for chamber orchestras. In contrast to the L.A. Phil, which filled the stage with 100 or so musicians, the chamber orchestra was but half that size. The idea was to create a group that would play works written expressly for such an orchestra, many of them from the Baroque era. “The ensemble was never meant to compete with the Philharmonic,” Arkatov’s son said...." Helen Frankenthaler Biography: Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow. Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann. Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour. Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century. Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others. Select recent important exhibitions have included Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Gagosian, NY, 2013); Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner (Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK, 2014); Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2014–15); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler (Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 2015); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts...

Superb provenance: gifted by Hunt Slonem to Andy Warhol muse Monique Van Vooren Hunt Slonem A Duck to Remember Your House By (inscribed and signed three times to Andy Warhol's friend Monique Van Vooren), 1991-2011 Watercolor on Paper Hand signed and dated recto, signed again verso; inscribed "Monique, a duck to remember your house by.Thank you for the birthday Love Hunt 2011" Unique work Frame included: held in the original artist's vintage wood frame Measurements: Framed: 12.5" x 10.5" x .5" Unframed 9.75" x 8" This work is hand signed three times by Hunt Slonem: once on the recto, once on the verso, and once following the written inscription. Provenance is impeccable as this cherished gift from Hunt Slonem was acquired from the estate of the actress and socialite Monique Van Vooren. The work was painted in 1991 (and dated 1991 on the recto), and was gifted by the artist to Monique in 2011, bearing a dated dedication verso. Monique Van Vooren (1927-2020) was a film and stage actress who enjoyed a long career with diverse roles ranging from the 1960s television series Batman to Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein...

'Composition with Circles II', gouache on art paper, by James Pichette. A dynamic, lively abstract composition by an artist known for such stunning, viv...

Farmhouse by the Sea - Original Watercolor on Paper Tranquil landscape of a seaside farmhouse on the sand surrounded by coastal plants, in soft neutral watercolors. A distant ocean s...

Ink on paper 50.00 cm. x 65.00 cm. 19.69 in. x 25.59 in. (paper) LCD6765

Landscape is a watercolor on paper realized by Michele Ricciuti in 1984. Hand signed and dated lower left. Very good condition. Includes a contemporary wooden frame.

Anthony Padovano Untitled Abstract Expressionist drawing, 1971 Ink wash on paper drawing Signed and dated in ink wash Unique Original (unique) signed Abstract Expressionist ink wash ...

Lyman Kipp Untitled drawing, 1993 Unique Colored Ink Drawing on paper with two deckled edges Hand signed, inscribed and dated by the artist on lower front 26 1/4 × 20 inches Unframed...

Abstract fishing boat by California artist Virginia Hughins (Virginia Brubaker DeWolf), (American, 1923-2004). Signed "Hughins" lower right. Unframed. 9.5"H x 11.5"L. Hughins was a...

The body of a slim young man. 1970s. Marco Silombria signed. Marco Silombria, Italian advertising graphic designer, artist and ceramist. charcoal and wax on paper. Signed bottom righ...

Keith Haring Crawling Baby drawing circa 1983: This rare original, early 1980s Keith Haring drawing was executed by the artist on printed material from ...

Sketch is an original artwork realized in 1970 by the italian Contemporary artist Leo Guida (1992 - 2017). Original pencil drawing on ivory-colored paper. Not signed. This artwor...

Abstracted Bay Area skyline against a pink sunset creates beautiful and soft geometries in this small pastel urban landscape by San Francisco artist Chris...

A set of three fine hand painted botanical watercolour studies on silk of tulips by La Roche Laffitte. The works are signed bottom right. Some are titled and numbered (see photos) Th...

Watercolor on heavy paper realized by Carlo Ravagnan in 1970s. Hand signed lower right. Excellent condition.