Rudolf Baranik

"Lumen" Rudolf Baranik, 1975 Political Abstract Imagery Collage Composition

1975

David Hare Cronus Asleep in the Cave, 1991 Acrylic on paper on board 26 X 34 1/4 inches “Freedom is what we want,” David Hare boldly stated in 1965, but then he added the caveat, “and what we are most afraid of.” No one could accuse David Hare of possessing such fear. Blithely unconcerned with the critics’ judgments, Hare flitted through most of the major art developments of the mid-twentieth century in the United States. He changed mediums several times; just when his fame as a sculptor had reached its apogee about 1960, he switched over to painting. Yet he remained attached to surrealism long after it had fallen out of official favor. “I can’t change what I do in order to fit what would make me popular,” he said. “Not because of moral reasons, but just because I can’t do it; I’m not interested in it.” Hare was born in New York City in 1917; his family was both wealthy and familiar with the world of modern art. Meredith (1870-1932), his father, was a prominent corporate attorney. His mother, Elizabeth Sage Goodwin (1878-1948) was an art collector, a financial backer of the 1913 Armory Show, and a friend of artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Walt Kuhn, and Marcel Duchamp. In the 1920s, the entire family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and later to Colorado Springs, in the hope that the change in altitude and climate would help to heal Meredith’s tuberculosis. In Colorado Springs, Elizabeth founded the Fountain Valley School where David attended high school after his father died in 1932. In the western United States, Hare developed a fascination for kachina dolls and other aspects of Native American culture that would become a recurring source of inspiration in his career. After high school, Hare briefly attended Bard College (1936-37) in Annandale-on-Hudson. At a loss as to what to do next, he parlayed his mother’s contacts into opening a commercial photography studio and began dabbling in color photography, still a rarity at the time [Kodachrome was introduced in 1935]. At age 22, Hare had his first solo exhibition at Walker Gallery in New York City; his 30 color photographs included one of President Franklin Roosevelt. As a photographer, Hare experimented with an automatist technique called “heatage” (or “melted negatives”) in which he heated the negative in order to distort the image. Hare described them as “antagonisms of matter.” The final products were usually abstractions tending towards surrealism and similar to processes used by Man Ray, Raoul Ubac, and Wolfgang Paalen. In 1940, Hare moved to Roxbury, CT, where he fraternized with neighboring artists such as Alexander Calder and Arshile Gorky, as well as Yves Tanguy who was married to Hare’s cousin Kay Sage, and the art dealer Julian Levy. The same year, Hare received a commission from the American Museum of Natural History to document the Pueblo Indians. He traveled to Santa Fe and, for several months, he took portrait photographs of members of the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni tribes that were published in book form in 1941. World War II turned Hare’s life upside down. He became a conduit in the exchange of artistic and intellectual ideas between U.S. artists and the surrealist émigrés fleeing Europe. In 1942, Hare befriended Andre Breton, the principal theorist of surrealism. When Breton wanted to publish a magazine to promote the movement in the United States, he could not serve as an editor because he was a foreign national. Instead, Breton selected Hare to edit the journal, entitled VVV [shorth for “Victory, Victory, Victory”], which ran for four issues (the second and third issues were printed as a single volume) from June 1942 to February 1944. Each edition of VVV focused on “poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, sociology, (and) psychology,” and was extensively illustrated by surrealist artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Roberto Matta, and Yves Tanguy; Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp served as editorial advisors. At the suggestion of Jacqueline Lamba...

Charles Green Shaw Happening, 1964 Signed and dated on verso Oil on board 8.75 x 6 inches Charles Green Shaw, born into a wealthy New York family, began painting when he was in his mid-thirties. A 1914 graduate of Yale, Shaw also completed a year of architectural studies at Columbia University. During the 1920s Shaw enjoyed a successful career as a freelance writer for The New Yorker, Smart Set and Vanity Fair, chronicling the life of the theater and café society. In addition to penning insightful articles, Shaw was a poet, novelist and journalist. In 1927 he began to take a serious interest in art and attended Thomas Hart Benton's class at the Art Students League briefly in New York. He also studied privately with George Luks, who became a good friend. Once he had dedicated himself to non-traditional painting, Shaw's writing ability made him a potent defender of abstract art. After initial study with Benton and Luks, Shaw continued his artistic education in Paris by visiting numerous museums and galleries. From 1930 to 1932 Shaw's paintings evolved from a style imitative of Cubism to one directly inspired by it, though simplified and more purely geometric. Returning to the United States in 1933, Shaw began a series of abstracted cityscapes of skyscrapers he called Manhattan Motifs which evolved into his most famous works, the shaped canvases he called Plastic Polygons. The 1930s were productive years for Shaw. He showed his paintings in numerous group exhibitions, both in New York and abroad, and was also given several one-man exhibitions. Shaw had his first one-man exhibition at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery in New York in 1934, which included 25 Manhattan Motif paintings and 8 abstract works. In the spring of 1935 Shaw was introduced to Albert Gallatin...

Artist's proof numbered 2/4 measuring 127cm x 87cm.

Hyun Ae Kang is a famous South Korean Artist, who combines traditional Korean painting with Western abstract imagery using natural materials to create innovate mixed-media works that...