Wilhelm Hunt Diederich

Cossack Dancers

c. 1920

Ira Moskowitz, 'Navajo Courtship Dance (Squaw Dance)', lithograph, 1946, edition 30, Czestochowski 161. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed and dated in the stone, lower left. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (7/16 to 2 3/4 inches). Pale mat line, otherwise in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 11 13/16 x 14 13/16 inches (300 x 376 mm); sheet size 13 1/16 x 20 1/8 inches (332 x 511 mm). ABOUT THE ARTIST Ira Moskowitz was born in Galicia, Poland, in 1912, emigrating with his family to New York in 1927. He enrolled at the Art Student's League and studied there from 1928-31. In 1935, Moskowitz traveled to Paris and then lived until 1937 in what is now Israel. He returned to the United States in 1938 to marry artist Anna Barry in New York. The couple soon visited Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico, returning for extended periods until 1944, when they moved there permanently, staying until 1949. During this especially productive New Mexico period, Moskowitz received a Guggenheim fellowship. His work was inspired by the New Mexico landscape and the state’s three cultures (American Southwest, Native American, and Mexican). He focused on Pueblo and Navajo life, producing an extensive oeuvre of authentic American Indian imagery. He and Anna also visited and sketched across the border in Old Mexico. While in the Southwest, Moskowitz flourished as a printmaker while continuing to produce oils and watercolors. Over 100 of Moskowitz’s works depicting Native American ceremonies were used to illustrate the book American Indian Ceremonial Dances by John Collier, Crown Publishers, New York, 1972. After leaving the Southwest, printmaking remained an essential medium for the artist while his focus changed to subject matter celebrating Judaic religious life and customs. These works were well received early on, and Moskowitz was content to stay with them the rest of his life. From 1963 until 1966, Moskowitz lived in Paris, returning to New York City in 1967, where he made his permanent home until he died in 2001. Shortly before his death, Zaplin-Lampert Gallery of Santa Fe staged an exhibition of the artist's works, December 2000 - January 2001. Other one-person shows included the 8th Street Playhouse, New York, 1934; Houston Museum, 1941; and the San Antonio Museum, 1941. The artist’s work was included in exhibitions at the Art Students League, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Print Club, College Art Association (promotes excellence in scholarship and teaching), and the International Exhibition of Graphic Arts (shown at MOMA, 1955). Moskowitz’s lithographs of...

James Houston McConnell, 'Sister Kate', color serigraph, 1947, edition 24. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '24' in pencil. Annotated '10.00 - 19 colors - 24 copies - #24' in pencil. A fine impression, with vibrant, fresh colors, on heavy tan wove paper, with full margins (11/16 to 1 1/2 inches). Tack holes in the four margin corners, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Scarce. Another of McConnell's mid-century modernist, jazz-inspired serigraphs, 'Combo', is featured in the British Museum's 2008 publication (and traveling exhibition) 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock'. ABOUT THE IMAGE "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate", often simply "Sister Kate", is an up-tempo jazz dance song, written by Armand J. Piron and published in 1922. The lyrics of the song are narrated in the first person by Kate's sister, who sings about Kate's impressive dancing skill and her wish to be able to emulate it. She laments that she's not quite "up to date", but believes that dancing like "Sister Kate" will rectify this, and she will be able to impress "all the boys in the neighborhood" like her sister. Over the years this song has been performed and recorded by many artists, including Frances Faye and Rusty Warren, a 1959 version by Shel Silverstein...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, 'Untitled (Nude Dancer)', lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 12 in pencil. Number 12 of Volume 2, a series of 10 lithogr...

Ira Moskowitz, 'The Three Gods of Healing (Navajo Medicine Ceremony of the Night Chant)', lithograph, 1945, edition 30, Czestochowski 148. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed and dated in the stone, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (2 1/4 to 2 3/4 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 12 1/4 x 15 13/16 inches (311 x 402 mm); sheet size 17 1/8 x 20 7/8 inches (435 x 530 mm). ABOUT THIS WORK The nine-night ceremony known as the Night Chant or Nightway is believed to date from around 1000 B.C.E. when it was first performed by the Indians who lived in Canyon de Chelly (now eastern Arizona). It is considered the most sacred of all Navajo ceremonies and one of the most difficult and demanding to learn, as it encompasses hundreds of songs, dozens of prayers, and several highly complex sand paintings. And yet the demand for Night Chants is so great that as many as fifty such ceremonies might be held during a single winter season, which lasts eighteen to twenty weeks. The Night Chant is designed both to cure people who are ill and to restore the order and balance of human and non-human relationships within the Navajo universe. Led by a trained medicine man who has served a long apprenticeship and learned the intricate and detailed practices that are essential to the chant, the ceremony itself is capable of scaring off sickness and ugliness through techniques that shock or arouse. Once the disorder has been removed, order and balance are restored through song, prayer, sand painting, and other aspects of the ceremony. The medicine men who supervise the Night Chant ensure that everything—each dot and line in every sand painting, each verse in every song, each feather on each mask is arranged precisely, or it will not bring about the desired result. There are probably as many active Night Chant medicine men today as at any time in Navajo history due to the general increase in the Navajo population, the popularity of the ceremony, and the central role it plays in Navajo life and health. ABOUT THE ARTIST Ira Moskowitz was born in Galicia, Poland, in 1912, emigrating with his family to New York in 1927. He enrolled at the Art Student's League and studied there from 1928-31. In 1935, Moskowitz traveled to Paris and then lived until 1937 in what is now Israel. He returned to the United States in 1938 to marry artist Anna Barry in New York. The couple soon visited Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico, returning for extended periods until 1944, when they moved there permanently, staying until 1949. During this especially productive New Mexico period, Moskowitz received a Guggenheim fellowship. His work was inspired by the New Mexico landscape and the state’s three cultures (American Southwest, Native American, and Mexican). He focused on Pueblo and Navajo life, producing an extensive oeuvre of authentic American Indian imagery. He and Anna also visited and sketched across the border in Old Mexico. While in the Southwest, Moskowitz flourished as a printmaker while continuing to produce oils and watercolors. Over 100 of Moskowitz’s works depicting Native American ceremonies were used to illustrate the book American Indian Ceremonial Dances by John Collier, Crown Publishers, New York, 1972. After leaving the Southwest, printmaking remained an essential medium for the artist while his focus changed to subject matter celebrating Judaic religious life and customs. These works were well received early on, and Moskowitz was content to stay with them the rest of his life. From 1963 until 1966, Moskowitz lived in Paris, returning to New York City in 1967, where he made his permanent home until he died in 2001. Shortly before his death, Zaplin-Lampert Gallery of Santa Fe staged an exhibition of the artist's works, December 2000 - January 2001. Other one-person shows included the 8th Street Playhouse, New York, 1934; Houston Museum, 1941; and the San Antonio Museum, 1941. The artist’s work was included in exhibitions at the Art Students League, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Print Club, College Art Association (promotes excellence in scholarship and teaching), and the International Exhibition of Graphic Arts (shown at MOMA, 1955). Moskowitz’s lithographs of...

Keresan Dancers Etching & drypoint, 1962 Signed lower right (see photo) Inscribed lower left: "Artist's Proof Keresan Dancers" Depicts Keresan speaking peoples at Sam Felipe Pueblo Contemporary Puebloans are customarily described as belonging to either the eastern or the western division. The eastern Pueblo villages are in New Mexico along the Rio Grande and comprise groups who speak Tanoan and Keresan languages. Tanoan languages such as Tewa are distantly related to Uto-Aztecan, but Keresan has no known affinities. The western Pueblo villages include the Hopi villages of northern Arizona and the Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna villages, all in western New Mexico. Born Alice Glasier in Oakland, CA, Kloss grew up amid the worldly bustle of the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with honors in art in 1924. She discovered her talents in intaglio printmaking during a senior-year course in figurative drawing. The professor, Perham Nahl, held up a print from Kloss’ first plate, still damp from the printing process, and announced that she was destined to become a printmaker. In 1925, Gene married Phillips Kloss, a poet and composer who became her creative partner for life. The match was uncanny, for in her own way Gene, too, was a poet and a composer. Like poetry, her artworks capture a moment in time; like music, her compositions sing with aesthetic harmony. Although she was largely self-taught, Kloss was a printmaking virtuoso. On their honeymoon the Klosses traveled east from California, camping along the way. They spent two week is Taos Canyon – with a portable printing press cemented to a rock near their campsite – where Gene learned to appreciate the wealth of artistic subject matter in New Mexico. The landscape, the cultures, and the immense sky left an indelible impression on the couple, who returned every summer until they made Taos their permanent home 20 years later. Throughout her life, Kloss etched more than 625 copper plates, producing editions ranging from five to 250 prints. She pulled every print in every edition herself, manually cranking the wheel of her geared Sturges press until she finally purchased a motorized one when she was in her 70s. Believing that subject matter dictated technique, she employed etching, drypoint, aquatint, mezzotint, roulette, softground, and a variety of experimental approaches, often combining several techniques on the same plate. She also produced both oil and watercolor paintings. Kloss’ artworks are filled with drama. Her prints employ striking contrasts of darkness and light, and her subjects are often illuminated by mysterious light sources. Though she was a devout realist, there is also a devout abstraction on Kloss’ work that adds an almost mythical quality. For six decades Kloss documented the cultures of the region-from images of daily life to those of rarely seen ceremonies. She and her husband shared a profound respect for the land and people, which made them welcome among the Native American and Hispanic communities. Kloss never owned a camera but relied instead on observation and recollection. Her works provide an inside look at the cultures she depicted yet at the same time communicate the awe and freshness of an outsider’s perspective. Although Kloss is best known for her images of Native American and Penitente scenes, she found artistic inspiration wherever she was. During the early years of their marriage, when she and Phil returned to the Bay Area each winter to care for their aging families, she created images of the California coast. And when the Klosses moved to southwestern Colorado in 1965, she etched the mining towns and mountainous landscapes around her. In 1970 the Klosses returned to Taos and built a house north of town. Though her artwork continued to grow in popularity, she remained faithful to Taos’ Gallery A, where she insisted that owner Mary Sanchez keep the prices of her work reasonable regardless of its market value. Kloss continued to etch until 1985, when declining health made printmaking too difficult. From her first exhibition at San Francisco’s exclusive Gump’s in 1937 to her 1972 election to full membership in the National Academy of Design, Kloss experienced a selective fame. She received numerous awards, and though she is not as well known as members of the Taos Society of Artists...

An energetic and dynamic figural work showing a parade of figures from the Commedia dell'arte marching in step. Signed lower right, 'Liz Maxwell' (American, born 1936) and dated 1987. This notable California artist lived in New York before settling in Napa, California. Influenced by the Bay Area Figurative Painters, Maxwell has exhibited widely and with success and is the recipient of numerous prizes, medals and juried awards, including first place in the 'Watermedia National' from Long Beach Arts in California in 1998. She has also exhibited at SFMOMA and at the Oakland Museum. EDUCATION 1976 BA, Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, California, BA SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016 “Horizons”, Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2013 “Pro Arts at Lathan Square”, Liz Maxwell, Oakland, CA 2011 “Liz Maxwell: Recent Paintings,” Montclair Gallery, Oakland CA 2006 “Interaction: New Paintings by Liz Maxwell,” Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland, CA 2003 “Liz Maxwell: Paintings and Monotypes,” Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland CA 2003 “Liz Maxwell: Recent Monotypes,” The Corridor Project 410, San Francisco, CA 2002 “Unencumbered Views: Recent Paintings by Liz Maxwell,” Studio 7, Pleasanton, CA 2002 “Liz Maxwell: Landscapes Left Alone,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2000 “Recent Paintings by Liz Maxwell,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 1999 “Liz Maxwell: Linoleum Block Prints,” The Albatross, Berkeley, CA SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 “GLASS SLIPPER TO GLASS CEILING”, City College of San Francisco, CA 2015 “Same, Same, But Different 4.0,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2015 “EBB/FLOW”, Artist’ Annual Exhibition, Pro Arts, Oakland. CA 2014 “HERE”, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA 2014 “Collect”, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA 2014 “Same, Same, But Different 3.0,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2013 “Same, Same, But Different 2.0,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2012 “Shine,” Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA 2011 “Oscillating Landscapes,” Hang Art, San Francisco, CA 2011 “Statewide Painting Competition,” Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA 2011 “Arts on Fire XV,” Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA 2011 “Scapes Exhibition,” Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, CA 2011 “Green,” Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA 2011 “Untitled,” Caldecott Art Gallery, Oakland, CA 2010 “West Coast Prints...

Lithograph on wove paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good Condition; never framed or matted. Notes: Executed in 1956 and issued as the frontispiece of the Picasso Lithograph...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...