Abstract Geometric Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Geometric abstract painting made in 2020 by Amanda Andersen, initialed on the back. This piece is from a body of work inspired by ordinary object arrangements such as table-top still...

Simon Samsonian (1912 - 2003) Colorful Geometric Abstraction, 1981 Oil on paper 16 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Estate of the artist This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told. Art historians are finally beginning to realize that the power of abstraction in its early years was a zeitgeist not limited to the major European centers of the avant-garde — Paris, Munich, and Moscow — but one that quickly rippled to major cities throughout the world. Within a few decades that original shock of a new vision had inspired thousands of artists from different cultures — particularly those the Middle East — whose translations were not slavish imitations of works by seminal figures like Picasso, Braque, Malevich, and Kandinsky but creative variants colored by their respective cultures. This essay focuses on an extraordinary Armenian artist, his harrowing survival of the genocide, his rise to fame in Cairo, and his creation of a unique style of abstraction. Art historians have typically formed a chorus that teaches the history of abstraction like this: Just before and during the World War I era, several avant-garde artists emerged to create shockingly different new forms by which artists could express themselves. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke out with cubism, quickly followed by Mondrian. In Moscow, Malevich created Suprematism, the ultimate hard-edge geometric abstraction. And in Munich, Kandinsky emerged as the father of Abstract Expressionism. Within these few short years a zeitgeist was sensed throughout the art world. American pioneers, too — particularly Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell — felt this explosive freedom of expression. When Europe was recovering after World War I it became clear that Paris would retain its title as capitol of the art world, lasting through the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depression. But the end of World War II changed everything. A parallel war had been won by a group of irascible young Abstract Expressionists in New York — led by Pollock, Rothko, DeKooning, and Kline. No sooner had Paris been liberated from the Germans than Picasso, Matisse, Breton, and Duchamp surrendered to the Americans. From that point on New York would be the epicenter of the art world. But a lens that focuses myopically on the war between the avant-garde of Paris and New York misses the wider narrative of multiple aesthetic modernities that developed in the several decades following World War I. For Armenian artists the matter is even more complex owing to the genocide of 1915 where more than 1.5 million people — seventy-five percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — were massacred. Those not shot on the spot were sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped and forced to walk naked under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. As a child Samsonian witnessed the murder of his parents and most of the members of his family. Soon thereafter, his older sister, Anahid, quickly shepherded him into a line of children being rescued by Greek nuns. But they became separated and he lost her, too. He was sent to a Greek orphanage in Smyrna (now Izmir), on Turkey’s west coast. Because he only knew his first name, the orphanage gave him a last name based on the place where they found him — Samsun — a major port on Turkey’s north coast on the Black Sea. His birth date was unknown, too. According to Samsonian’s vague recollections he assumed he was about three or four years old at the onset of the genocide, which would place his birth year in 1911 or 1912. In 1922, when Samsonian was about 10, the Turks ended their war with the Greeks by putting Smyrna to the torch in what has been called the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” Once again, the child was on the run, escaping the fire and slaughter. He found temporary refuge in Constantinople, but within a year that major port would fall to the Turks, too, and become renamed as Istanbul. This time, Samsonian was whisked away to an orphanage in Greece founded by the American charity, Near East Relief — which is credited with saving so many Armenian orphans that the American historian Howard M. Sachar said it “quite literally kept an entire nation alive. Any understanding of Samsonian’s approach to modernism requires careful consideration of the impact of his early years because his art is inseparable from the anguish he experienced. In 1927, when he was a teenager, he was transferred to Cairo, Egypt, then a cosmopolitan city hosting a sizable portion of the Armenian diaspora. There he lived with thirty-two other children on the top floor of the Kalousdian Armenian School. Upon graduating in 1932 he won a scholarship to attend the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute — an Italian art school in Cairo — where he won first prize in final examinations among one hundred students. He found work with an Armenian lithographic printer and he returned to the Kalousdian Armenian School to teach drawing. In 1939 he married one of his students, Lucy Guendimian. The Cairo in which Samsonian matured as an artist was home to many prominent art collectors after World War I. In this receptive environment Samsonian exhibited widely and won many awards. Beginning in 1937 and for the next thirty years he exhibited annually at the prestigious Le Salon du Caire hosted by the Société les Amis de l’Art (founded in 1921). After World War II he hit his stride as a modernist in Cairo, counting among his peers other artists of the Armenian diaspora such as Onnig Avedissian, Achod Zorian, Gregoire Meguerdichian, Hagop Hagopian...

My first works are digital, in that aspect each decision can be rethought and changed as many times as necessary. Unlike my previous works, this was the first time that I was faced with a blank paper...

Abstract geometric drawing by artist James McCahon. This piece features shades of black, grey, and white rectangular shapes with rounded abstract circles...

Geometric abstract painting made in 2020 by Amanda Andersen, initialed on the back. This piece is from a body of work inspired by ordinary object arrangements such as table-top still...

Finesse and delicacy are what characterize best Antonin Anzil’s artistic practice. Paper as a medium seems incompatible with the idea of engraving or sculpturing; and yet. Using a sh...

Geometric abstract painting made in 2020 by Amanda Andersen, initialed on the back. This piece is from a body of work inspired by ordinary object arrangements such as table-top still...

This mesmerizing ink drawing on clay-coated panel by Jenifer Kent shows off the artist's meditative process as she hand-draws, without assistance from a straight edge, a network of l...

Geometric abstract painting made in 2020 by Amanda Andersen, initialed on the back. This piece is from a body of work inspired by ordinary object arrangements such as table-top still...

"The Chicken", is ink on paper by Denver artist Edward Marecak (1919-1993) from the 1940's of an abstract depiction of a chicken in black and red. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 23 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches. Image size measures 15 ¾ x 11 ½ inches. Drawing is clean and in very good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Edward Marecak Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier ouevre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee, and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish, foreshadowed the output of his entire Colorado-based career, distinguished by a dramatic use of color, intricacy of execution and attention to detail contributing to their visual impact. He once observed, "Each time I start a new painting I always fool myself by saying this time keep it simple and not get entangled with such complex patterns, color and design; but I always find myself getting more involved with richness, color and subject matter." An idiosyncratic artist proficient in oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache and casein, he did not draw upon Colorado subject matter for his work, unlike many of his fellow painters in the state. Instead he used Midwest landscape imagery, bringing to life in it witches and spirits adapted from the Slovakian folk tales he heard growing up in Ohio. A number of his paintings depict winter witches derived from the Slovak custom in the Tatra Mountains of burning an effigy of the winter witch in the early spring to banish the memory of a hard winter. The folk tale element imparts a dream-like quality to many of his paintings. A devote of Greek mythology, he placed the figures of Circe, Persephone, Sybil, Hera and others in modern settings. The goddess in Persephone Brings a Pumpkin to her Mother, attired as a Midwestern farmer’s daughter, heralds the advent of fall with the pumpkin before departing to spend the winter season in the underworld. Train to Olympus, the meeting place of the gods in ancient Greece, juxtaposes ancient mythology with modernity creating a combination of whimsy and thought-provoking consideration for the viewer. Voyage to Troy #1 alludes to the ancient city that was the site of the Trojan Wars, but has a contemporary, autobiographical component referencing the harbor of the Aleutian Islands recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. In the 1980s Marecak used the goddess Hera in his painting, Hera Contemplates Aspects of the Art Nouveau, to comment on art movements in the latter half of the twentieth century Marecak’s love of classical music and opera, which he shared with his wife and to which he often listened while painting in his Denver basement studio, is reflected in Homage of Offenbach, an abstract work translating the composer’s musical colors into colorful palette. Pace, Pace, Mio Dio, the title of his earliest surrealist painting, is a soprano aria from Verdi’s opera, La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny or Fate, a favorite Marecak subject). His Queen of the Night relates to a character from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. In addition to paintings and works on paper, he produced hooked rugs, textiles and ceramics. He likewise produced designs for ceramics, tableware and furniture created by his wife Donna, an accomplished Colorado ceramist. Both of them generally eschewed exhibitions and galleries, preferring to quietly do their work while remaining outside of the mainstream. He initially exhibited at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 1948 receiving a purchase award. The following year he had his first one-person show of paintings and lithographs at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs. In the 1950s and early 1960s he participated in group exhibitions at the Print Club (Philadelphia); Amarillo Public Library (Texas); annual Blossom Festival Show (Canon City, Colorado); Adele Simpson’s "Art of Living" in New York; Denver Art Museum; and the Fox Rubenstein-Serkey Gallery (Denver); but he did not have another one-person show until 1966 at the Denver home of his friends, John and Gerda Scott. They arranged for his first one-person show outside of Colorado held two years later at the Martin Lowitz Gallery in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, California. That same year his work was featured at the Zantman Galleries in Carmel, California. Thereafter he became an infrequent exhibitor after the 1970s so that his work was rarely seen outside his basement studio. In 1980 he, his wife and Mark Zamantakis exhibited at Denver’s Jewish Community Center, and four years later he had a one-person show at the Studio Gallery in Denver. In 1992 he was included in a group show at the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery in Denver, and a year later received a large, posthumous retrospective at the Emmanuel...

Contemporary black and white geometric charcoal drawing by artist James McCahon. This drawing features a balanced composition of rectangular shapes with rounded circles and lines. Signed and dated on the bottom right corner. Currently hung in a simple white frame. Dimensions Without Frame: H 13 in. x W 10 in. Artist Biography: James McCahon is a multi-disciplinary designer and artist based in Southern California. With experience in product design, art direction, fine art and photography, James is an expert in visual story telling. Through storytelling, James' artwork consists of abstract shapes and a wide range of colors. James believes the unifying factor of any successful project is a clear point of view. James has a BFA in Design from the Biola University in La Mirada...

'Quadrants Quadrille' from Irene Zweig, where intellect, science, mathematics and order are at play in shades of calm blue, silver, grey and white, in the abstract mixed media painti...

Geometric and serene in its complexity - abstract contemporary painting created with impeccable attention to detail by deconstructing original watercolors into dime sized triangular cut outs and then affixing them to a wooden panel. Artist Irene Zweig rearranges the media into a new and unique design, where the eye interprets the original message as subliminal; with the components of it still present, and the result is one of contemplative balance and harmony. Fine art, science and mathematics blend in Zweig's intellectually curious and aesthetically sound works that beautifully relate to other eclectic works. 'Gold with...

'Quadrants Ephemeral' from Irene Zweig, where intellect, science, mathematics and order are at play in shades of green, blue, grey and white, in the abstract mixed media painting tha...

This mesmerizing ink drawing on clay-coated panel by Jenifer Kent shows off the artist's meditative process as she hand-draws, without assistance from a straight edge, a network of l...

Geometric abstract painting made in 2020 by Amanda Andersen, initialed on the back. This piece is from a body of work inspired by ordinary object arrangements such as table-top still...

This mesmerizing ink drawing on clay-coated panel by Jenifer Kent shows off the artist's meditative process as she hand-draws, without assistance from a straight edge, a network of l...

Anna Kruhelska is a visual artist and architect working across fields of art and design. She creates abstract, three-dimensional paper wall reliefs that startle in their intricacy an...

Abstract Baby Blue and brown geometric square and rectangle abstract artwork. Canvas shadow box frame.

This mesmerizing ink drawing on clay-coated panel by Jenifer Kent shows off the artist's meditative process as she hand-draws, without assistance from a straight edge, a network of l...

This mesmerizing ink drawing on clay-coated panel by Jenifer Kent shows off the artist's meditative process as she hand-draws, without assistance from a straight edge, a network of l...

Jay Rosenblum Polarity #3, 1981 Acrylic on paper 6 × 9 1/2 inches Signed and titled in graphite pencil on the front Unframed This gem of a work is an acrylic painting on paper by ren...

Gerlinde Beck Untitled Geometric Abstraction (Black) - Design for a Sculpture Pencil Drawing Year: 1969 Size: 21.3 × 17.6 in Signed by hand COA provided ---------------------------...

'Square of Sublimity IV' from Irene Zweig, where intellect, science, mathematics and order are at play in shades of yellow, green, and rust in the abstract mixed media painting that ...

Nathalie Palomino is a French self-taught artist practicing pyrography on paper. Her perpetual quest for light and transparency in her works pushes her to multiply the perforations o...

Flit, is an abstract geometric black ink drawing on white paper, 2022. The work is hand-drawn by the artist without any ruler or straight edge. She works organically from the center,...

Drawing / Geometric Abstraction / Mythology and Religion / Bright and Vivid Colors / Black and White Enamel, ink, colored pencil and alcohol ink on paper....

Deep teal blue, baby blue geometric abstract painting.

Finesse and delicacy are what characterize best Antonin Anzil’s artistic practice. Paper as a medium seems incompatible with the idea of engraving or sculpturing; and yet. Using a sh...

Ky Anderson Three Lean, 2021 acrylic and ink on watercolor paper 30 x 22 in. (and360) This original acrylic and ink painting on watercolor paper by Ky Anderson features geometric sh...

The series bodies in space was born from my interest in architecture and the games of perception. I use color as a construction element where the volumes are made visible through col...

Dana Piazza's creates abstract colorful drawings, full of the illusion of depth, movement, and three-dimensionality. His highly obsessive ink drawings on paper are built upon algorit...

Sandi Gehring (1957), American artist living and working in Amsterdam. Education; Art Students League, NY and Wackers Academie, Amsterdam. Currently repr...

pastel and micro pen on paper b. 1979, Poole, Dorset, UK Danielle Hacche was born in Poole, Dorset in the Southwest of the United Kingdom. After moving to the United States with he...

My first works are digital, in that aspect each decision can be rethought and changed as many times as necessary. Unlike my previous works, this was the first time that I was faced with a blank paper...

Bold abstract black and white pastel landscape drawing by Erle Loran (American, 1905-1999). Unsigned, but was acquired from the estate of the artist. Presented in a new black mat with foam core backing. Provenance: Estate of Earle Loran; David Carlson...

Serie II number 5-combination of minimalism geometric draw and abstract writing (semicircle and stripes). Made in black and white, beige colors. Gouache on bulky 250g natural colored...

This small work on paper by Martin Canin, measuring 22 x 30 inch, and dating from 1976, is the study for a large painting titled Hagaroma. Color is freed from objective context and b...

Chicago-based artist Jan Pieter Fokkens uses his work as a means of processing the incomprehensible. Navigating the relationship between algorithmic abstraction and the tangible qualities of pattern and color, Fokkens meditates on how we as viewers negotiate our realities. Entitled "The Adventure II," this vibrant drawing depicts a still from the Italian classic film...

Chicago-based artist Jan Pieter Fokkens uses his work as a means of processing the incomprehensible. Navigating the relationship between algorithmic abstraction and the tangible qualities of pattern and color, Fokkens meditates on how reality is mediated by digital image. Entitled "NGC-6397," this vibrant drawing offers a representation of the globular cluster NGC-6397, also known as Caldwell 87, located 7,800 light-years from Earth. Using an image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope...

"Corner 7" is a unique monoprint. The artist's ink drawing made on translucent film was etched into a copper plate using the technique of photogravure, and the plate became a repeata...

Chicago-based artist Jan Pieter Fokkens uses his work as a means of processing the incomprehensible. Navigating the relationship between algorithmic abstraction and the tangible qualities of pattern and color, Fokkens meditates on how reality is mediated by digital image. Entitled "NGC-3201," this vibrant drawing offers a representation of the globular cluster NGC-3201. Using an image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope...

The series bodies in space was born from my interest in architecture and the games of perception. I use color as a construction element where the volumes are made visible through col...

Bold mid century modern abstracted pastel on paper still life of several terra cotta jugs and vessels distilled down to their most basic shapes and ar...

Sandi Gehring (1957), American artist living and working in Amsterdam. Education; Art Students League, NY and Wackers Academie, Amsterdam. Currently repr...

Drawing / Geometric Abstraction / Mythology and Religion / Bright and Vivid Colors / Black and White Enamel, ink, colored pencil and alcohol ink on paper....

Finesse and delicacy are what characterize best Antonin Anzil’s artistic practice. Paper as a medium seems incompatible with the idea of engraving or sculpturing; and yet. Using a sh...

Her work is basically drawing; drawings of endless patterns of ink, like cosmic fractals mixed with collages and cutting technique. With simple materials she makes reflections on a s...

Blue Mother Drawing #2, by Jeanette Fintz in 2020 22 x 30 inches watercolor, gouache on Fabriano paper Signed lower right corner Framed: 32 x 39.5 inches, custom white frame, 8 ply w...

Blue Mother Drawing #3, by Jeanette Fintz in 2020 22 x 30 inches watercolor, gouache on Fabriano paper Signed lower right corner Framed: 32 x 39.5 inches, custom white frame, 8 ply w...

Nathalie Palomino is a French self-taught artist practicing pyrography on paper. Her perpetual quest for light and transparency in her works pushes her to multiply the perforations o...

Flock 2 by Nigel Bird [2021] original Pencil on paper Image size: H:69 cm x W:69 cm Complete Size of Unframed Work: H:69 cm x W:69 cm x D:0.1cm Sold Unframed Please note that insitu...

Jonathan Higgins' contemporary metalpoint drawing on blue-tinted acrylic ground on paper was executed in silver and copper. Metalpoint is a Renaissance drawing technique that was use...

Finesse and delicacy are what characterize best Antonin Anzil’s artistic practice. Paper as a medium seems incompatible with the idea of engraving or sculpturing; and yet. Using a sh...

My first works are digital, in that aspect each decision can be rethought and changed as many times as necessary. Unlike my previous works, this was the first time that I was faced with a blank paper...

Rudolph de Harak was a graphic and environmental designer and art director for Seventeen Magazine and teacher at Cooper Unio Yale and Parsons School o...

Jonathan Higgins' contemporary metalpoint drawing on blue-tinted acrylic ground on paper was executed in silver and brass. Metalpoint is a Renaissance drawing technique that was used...

Small abstract geometric drawing of circular white moons on a gray graphite background with grid patterns “The Moons of Jupiter (Study I)” by Hudson Valley artist, David Dew Bruner,...