Henry Pearson

Untitled Mod Op Art 1967 Painting on Silk

1967

Label from Obelisk Gallery verso. Henry C. Pearson (October 8, 1914 – December 3, 2006) was an American abstract and modernist painter. Pearson was born in Kinston, North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1938, and studied theatrical design at Yale University. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Second World War, designing maps for the Okinawa campaign, and then re-enlisted to serve in the US occupation of Japan, where he was influenced by Japanese art and theatre forms. Henry Pearson is perhaps best known for a mildly optical manner of painting, featuring a mutable labyrinth of undulating parallel lines, which somewhat inadvertently linked him to the Op Art movement of the 1960s. Although included in the Museum of Modern Art's landmark exhibition The Responsive Eye in 1965, his work displays an intuitive rhythm and poetic elegance that falls well outside of the calculated, often hard-edged quality normally associated with the Op group of artists. Pearson came late to the visual arts. His first career, in theatre design, was cut short by the Second World War. He entered the U.S. Army in 1942, and at war's end requested duty in occupied Japan, where a prolonged contact with Japanese culture nurtured a passion for painting. Upon his discharge from the army, in 1953, he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City, where he studied with, among others, Reginald Marsh and Will Barnet. Inspired by Malevich, he turned to rectilinear abstraction, and employed it as the dominant means of expression in his painting between 1954 and 1961. As early as 1959, however, sensing an incipient decadence in his geometric canvases...

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Yaacov Agam, Israeli (b. 1928) Hand signed and dated This is a great example of bold, graphic, mod design. Along with Reuven Rubin and Menashe Kadishman he is among Israel's best kn...

Josef Alan Levi (1938) is an American artist whose works range over a number of different styles, but which are unified by certain themes consistently present among them. Josef Levi began his artistic career in the 1960s and early '70s, producing highly abstract and very modernist pieces: these employing exotic materials such as light fixtures and metallic parts. By 1975, Levy had transitioned to painting and drawing still lifes. At first these were, traditionally, of mundane subjects. Later, he would depict images from art history, including figures originally created by the Old Masters. Around 1980, he made another important shift, this time toward creating highly precise, though subtly altered reproductions of pairs of female faces which were originally produced by other artists. It is perhaps this work for which he is most well known. Since around 2000, Josef Levi has changed the style of his work yet again: now he works entirely with computers, using digital techniques to abstract greatly from art history, and also from other sources. Levi's works of art in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the National Gallery of Art, and the Albright-Knox Museum, among many others. Levi's art has been featured on the cover of Harper's Magazine twice, once in June 1987, and once in May 1997. Josef Levi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 from the University of Connecticut, where he majored in fine arts and minored in literature. From 1959 to 1960, he served to a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and from 1960 through 1967 he was in the U.S. Army Reserves. In 1966, he received the Purchase Award from the University of Illinois in 1966, and he was featured in New Talent U.S.A. by Art in America. He was an artist in residence at Appalachian State University in 1969, taught at Farleigh Dickenson University in 1971 and was a visiting professor of art at Pennsylvania State University in 1977. From 1975 to 2007, Levi resided in New York City. He now lives in an apartment in Rome, where he is able to paint with natural light as he was unable in New York. From 1959 to 1960, Josef took some courses of Howard McParlin Davis and Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University which initiated him into the techniques of reproducing the works of the Old Masters. His first works, created in the 1960s, were wood and stone sculptures of women. His first mature works were abstract pieces, constructed of electric lights and steel. In 1970, Levi's materials included fluorescent light bulbs, Rust-Oleum and perforated metal in addition to paint and canvas. By 1980, Josef Levi's art had transformed into a very specific form: a combination of reproductions of female faces which were originally depicted by other artists. The faces which he reproduces may be derived from either portraits or from small portions of much larger works; they are taken from paintings of the Old Masters, Japanese ukiyo-e, and 20th-century art. Artists from whom he has borrowed include: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Piero della Francesca, Botero, Matisse, Utamaro, Correggio, Da Vinci, Picasso, Chuck Close, Max Beckmann, Pisanello, Lichtenstein. The creation of these works is informed by Levi's knowledge and study of art history. Josef Levi's paintings from this period are drawn, then painted on fine linen canvas on wooden stretchers. The canvas is coated with twenty-five layers of gesso in order to produce a smooth surface on which to work. The drawing phase takes at least one month. Levi seals the drawing with acrylic varnish, and then he may apply layers of transparent acrylic in order to approximate the look of old paintings. After the last paint is applied, another layer of acrylic varnish is sprayed on to protect the work. Most of the figures in his contemporary pieces are not paired with any others. SELECTED COLLECTIONS MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, NY ALBRIGHT- KNOX GALLERY, BUFFALO, NY ALDRICH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, RIDGEFIELD, CT NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART, BROOKLYN, NY SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, WASHINGTON, DC CORCORAN GALLERY, WASHINGTON, DC UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME ART...

Yaacov Agam Israeli (b. 1928) Hand signed, not individually numbered but from edition of 180. I can include a copy of the title sheet with the edition size and his signature if you r...

Unique mixed media work created from a Master plate for collagraph printmaking, featuring a bold and modern geometric kimono shape in green, white, and black, by Patricia A. Pearce (...

Wood and serigraph; signed Edition size: 15

Wood and serigraph; signed; framed Edition size: 15

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