Ruth Eckstein

Arcadia V

This abstract artwork is one of a group of over 100 pieces personally selected by the artist, and gifted to a close personal friend in 1969. Please note that this painting was never ...

This abstract artwork is one of a group of over 100 pieces personally selected by the artist, and gifted to a close personal friend in 1969. Please note that this painting was never ...

This abstract artwork is one of a group of over 100 pieces personally selected by the artist, and gifted to a close personal friend in 1969. Please note this painting was never matte...

The FS No. 22 series serves as the foundational pulse of the collection. These works are not merely sketches, but intellectual artifacts—a raw, unedited dialogue between the artist’s...

An early abstract expressionist work on paper by American artist Felix Ruvolo. Mystery revolves around the very beginnings of Felix Ruvolo’s life.  Any biographical information to be found only lists a birth year for Felix, but no day or month.  We know he was born in New York City in 1912, and was raised by his grandparents in Sicily until the age of 12.  Why he was sent back to Italy remains a mystery as well. What we do know is that young Felix showed so much promise as an artist that the family hired a professional artist to work with Felix while he was being raised in Sicily.   In 1924, at the age of 12, Ruvolo was sent back to the United States to rejoin his parents, who were settling in Chicago. In Chicago, Ruvolo continued his private art lessons, and later enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute.   By the 1930s, the young prodigy was exhibiting his work regularly in Chicago, and was invited to participate in an American Federation of Arts traveling exhibition. This exposure brought more attention to Ruvolo’s work and he was soon invited to exhibit at major American venues, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Carnegie Institute, and the Walker Art Center.  In 1945, Ruvolo took a position teaching at the Chicago Art Institute where he had studied just a few years prior.   With extensive exhibitions in the United States, international attention arose and Ruvolo was invited to show at the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, and at the Galerie Creuse in Paris, France.    By this time, Felix’s works were being reproduced in national magazines and in anthologies published by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and Albright Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, in the American Encyclopedia, the Dictionaire de la Peinture Abstraite, and Il Giornale D'Italia, and museums and private individuals around the world were acquiring works by Ruvolo for their collections. By 1950 Ruvolo was invited, by a unanimous vote of the staff, to join the faculty of the art department at University of California, Berkeley, which was a hotbed of modern art at the time. Ruvolo accepted the position at UC Berkeley and settled in Berkeley, CA where his home became a gathering place for many artists and intellectuals.   In 1951, Ruvolo’s work was included in the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America’ held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Ruvolo was so highly regarded and respected by his peers around the country.  George McNeil, who had been the director of the Pratt Institute in New York, is known to have said that he accepted an invitation to come to UC Berkeley because Felix was there.  Ruvolo was deeply engrained in the art scene in the San Francisco Bay Area during it’s mercurial rise to a cultural mecca, and was an influence on many young artist in the area including Mark di Suvero, William Brown, Mary Snowden...

Mark di Suvero Grass Power, 1979-2014 Mixed Media drawing: marker, ink and pencil on paper Hand titled, signed and inscribed to Nadine by Mark di Suvero Frame included: Floated and f...

Margie Hughto Orchid & Red, 1983 Dyed Handmade paper Hand signed and dated by the artist on the lower right front. Titled on the back. Unique Frame Inclu...

Thomas Anderson Abstract Expressionist painting on paper, ca. 1987 Mixed media watercolor, gouache and marker on paper Signed in black marker lower right front Unique Frame included ...

Beautiful abstract expressionist collage by Bay Area artist Michael Pauker (American, b.1957). Composed of two contrasting sections; army green with orange and warm neutral found obj...

This is a mixed media monoprint titled Homage a Sam (I first thought it was for Sam Gilliam but the artist told me it was for Sam Francis. He has done a number of these Homages as I have found a New York Times article referencing a "cast paper folded into an airplane shape by Richard Royce serves as an homage to the late sculptor Alexander Calder".Richard Royce, born New York, 1941. After getting his BA and MA in fine art at the University of Wisconsin where he studied under Alfred Sessler...