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Adolf BencaLarge Figurative Abstract Expressionist Textured Painting Adolf Benca
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About the Item
Abstract oil painting on stretched canvas featuring figures against a dark brown background. Signed upper left.
Adolf Benca was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1959. He immigrated to the United States in 1969 and he studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and received a Master's of Fine Art from the Columbia University College.
Adolf Benca (born 1959, in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia), is an American Post war/ Contemporary painter of Slovakian origin.
Benca was born on 16 May 1959, in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. He was the older of two children, the younger being his sister Lubica. His family immigrated to the United States when he was ten years old, in 1969. From 1969 to 1973 he attended the Elementary Private School in Chicago. He attended Grayslake High School in Illinois between 1973 and 1977. He became interested in art very early in his life, attending several art schools in Chicago while he was an elementary student.
In 1966, while he was still living in Czechoslovakia, he was already illustrating children's books. In 1968, a year prior to his family emigrating from Czechoslovakia, because of Russian occupation of Bratislava, his family moved to Vienna, where young Benca became interested in philosophy and started painting mythological themes and subjects. He participated in a few young artist programs in 1970 and 1971.
Adolf Benca studied and graduated from several universities. From 1977 to 1981 he studied at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, art school in New York, where he received his B.F.A. (Bachelor of Fine Arts) degree. For the next four years (1982–1985) he studied at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating at 1987, receiving the title of Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.). From 1987 to 1988 he studied the human anatomy at the University of Bologna in Italy where he received the title "Doctor honoris causa" (Dr.h.c.) in the area of anatomy. At University Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland he received the title "Doctor honoris causa" in the area of philosophy. As he was receiving his titles and studied, Benca continued to paint and exhibit his works in many galleries around the world, many of his paintings ending up in private collections.
In 1985 he became a member of the Swizzero di Roma.
In 1987 he became a member of the French Academy in Rome.
In 1988 he became a member of the American Academy in Rome.
In 1994 he became a member of the Swedish Institute in Rome.
In 2000 he became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
After "the Fall of the Iron Curtain" he decided to continue his career in Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2002 he started his work in Prague, and was awarded the award of the "Masaryk Academy".
In 2012 Adolf Benca and the "Bratislava's ship company" a.d. (Bratislavská lodná spoločnosť a. s ) have founded the company "Adolf Benca Académia s.r.o.". He was included in Bomb Magazine Painters & Writers No. 4 Along with William Wegman, David Salle, Nancy Spero, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Pat Steir, and more. His works can be found all over the world, in private collections, as well as exhibits at museums, such as "Metropolitan Museum" and "Museum of Modern Art" in New York.
Select Museums
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY – MoMA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
National Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma
High Museum of Art Atlanta
Musei Vatican, Vatican, Rome
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Little Rock, Arkansas
Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle
Contemporary Art Museum, Tel Aviv
Art Museum, Hong Kong
Floating Galleries of the Slovakia, Bratislava
National Gallery of the Slovakia, Bratislava
Select group exhibitions
Matica Slovenska, "Cultural Revolutions", Martin, Slovakia
United Nations, Artists From Slovakia
Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection
Achim Moeller Fine Art, New York
Achim Moeller Fine Art, Salon des Beaux Arts, Paris
Kennesaw State College, Marietta, Georgia
Gallery Three Zero, New York, AMFAR benefit
The Cooper Union, "Good Work"
Stuart Levy Gallery, New York
Twining Gallery, New York, Drawings on War
M-13 Gallery, New York
Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Queens Museum, New York
The Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture, University of Tennessee
Brenda Kroos Gallery, Columbus, Ohio
Deborah Sharpe Gallery, New York
Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences, Montreal
Paul Olsen Gallery, New York
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Alexander Carlson Gallery
His artworks have been exhibited in the European Parliament since the chairmanship of the Slovak Republic of the European Union.
- Creator:Adolf Benca (1959)
- Dimensions:Height: 36.5 in (92.71 cm)Width: 34.5 in (87.63 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:minor wear.
- Gallery Location:Surfside, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU3829514242
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View AllLarge Archie Rand Abstract Expressionist Cartoon Oil Painting Dusseldorf
By Archie Rand
Located in Surfside, FL
"Dusseldorf, Germany" 1993, oil on canvas, hand signed and dated lower left,
Canvas (unframed):18 X 48. framed: 19.5 X 49.5
Provenance: directly from the artist. Exhibited at Phyllis Kind Gallery in NYC in 1987.
Archie Rand (American, born 1949) is an artist from Brooklyn, New York.
Rand's work as a painter and muralist is held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
His graphic works and books are held by the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute Of Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and The New York Public Library; and are owned by Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Johns Hopkins universities.
Born in Brooklyn, Rand received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in cinegraphics from the Pratt Institute, having studied previously at the Art Students League of New York.
His first exhibition was in 1966, at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York. He has since had over 100 solo exhibitions, and his work has been included in over 200 group exhibitions.
He is currently Presidential Professor of Art at Brooklyn College which granted him the Award for Excellence in Creative Achievement in 2016. Before joining Brooklyn College, Rand was the chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Columbia University.
The Italian Academy For Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University presented him with The Siena Prize in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Foundation Fellowship in 1999 and was made a Laureate of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, which awarded him the Achievement Medal for Contributions in the Visual Arts. In 2002 he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching from Columbia University.
In 2002 he became the artistic advisor to film director Ang Lee for his production of The Hulk, and was asked by Milestone Films to provide a commentary track for the DVD release of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic 1955 film The Mystery of Picasso.
Archie Rand’s earliest major works are “The Letter Paintings” (or “The Jazz Paintings”) (1968–71), a radically positioned series of technically inventive, mural-sized canvases. The Letter Paintings, by incorporating the names of mainly male and female African-American musicians, undermined prevailing aesthetic categories by conflating many contemporary movements including Conceptual Art, Color Field, Pattern and Decoration, diary entry and social commentary.
In 1974 Rand received a commission from Congregation B’nai Yosef in Brooklyn. Rand was asked to paint thematic murals on the complete 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m2) interior surfaces of the synagogue. The work took three years, and completing this commission made Rand the author of the only narratively painted synagogue in the world and the only one we know of since the 2nd Century Dura-Europos. The religious legal controversy raised by placing wall paintings in a traditionally iconoclastic space was resolved by the verdict of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, then considered to be the world’s leading Talmudic scholar, who declared the paintings to be in conformity with the law. His subsequent turn to figuration may have been influenced by his friendship with Philip Guston, whose own work was transformed in the late 1960s. Like Guston, Rand "chafed at the limitations of purely abstract forms."
A near-cult figure who started out as a child prodigy and whose admirers range from John Ashbery to Julian Schnabel. Rand’s paintings display a vast and savvy menu of inventive and finely executed approaches. He has completed many series after the works of Paul Celan, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Eugenio Montale, Yehuda Amichai, Rainer Maria Rilke, Samuel Beckett/Paul Eluard and Jack Spicer. Working often with poets, he has produced books and continues to engage in publishing collaborative projects. He maintained a correspondence with the American British Jewish painter R.B. Kitaj.
In 2008, on a warehouse wall, Rand mounted the painting, “The 613”, which at 1700 square feet (17’ x 100’) is nearly twice the size of James Rosenquist’s F-111. It is one of the largest freestanding paintings ever made. Reminiscent of “The Segments” paintings it is intimidatingly enormous. Paradoxically, despite the raucous cartoony bytes that shoot colorful flashes from the manic surface, “The 613” glows warmly. Its overall effect is strangely calming and majestic.
In an article on a 2011 exhibition of Rand's "Had Gadya" series, David Kaufmann wrote:
Rand displayed his work in 15 solo exhibitions between 2008 and 2017, many of them showcasing paintings done after Scripture, or his workings with poets: Including “Had Gadya, 2005”, Borowsky Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (2011); “Gods Change, Prayers Are Here To Stay (after Yehuda Amichai), 2000", Katz Gallery, Atlanta, GA (2014); “Psalm 68, 1994”, Derfner Museum, Riverdale, NY (2014); “The Chapter Paintings”, Tribeca Gallery, NY (2015); “Men Who Turn Back (after Eugenio Montale), 1995", SRO Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2016); “Sixty Paintings From the Bible” & “The Book of Judith, 2012”, Cleveland State University Galleries, Cleveland, OH (2016) & The American Jewish Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2017); “Archie Rand: Early Works With Poetry: Jack Spicer, 1991 and Samuel Beckett/Paul Eluard, 1993”, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY (2017).
"The 613"
In 2015 Blue Rider/Penguin/Random House published The 613, allotting one color plate per page for each of the 614 units in the painting. The Wall Street Journal labeled The 613 as “dynamic…remarkable…thrilling” The New York Times selected the book as “Editors' Choice” and praised it in two separate reviews calling it “wonderfully garish” and declaring that “nothing prepared the art world for 'The 613.'
Recent Activity
In 2016 Rand showed two bodies of work that were done in Italy, “La Certosa Di Pontignano, 1995” and “Mount Etna, 2005,” at The Interchurch Center Galleries, New York. From 2016 to 2017 he served as the Curator and Juror for the Governor of Wyoming’s Capitol Arts Exhibition at The Wyoming State Museum, Cheyenne, WY.
A 2017 exhibition, “Archie Rand: Early Works With Poetry”, featured two series of work from 1991 and 1993 after poems by Jack Spicer and Samuel Beckett/Paul Eluard.
This painting was exhibited in the Phyllis Kind Gallery in NY in 1987.
(Phyllis Kind was an American art dealer active in Chicago and New York. She promoted the work of the Chicago Imagists, The Monster Roster and The Hairy Who and outsider artists. Kind opened a gallery in Chicago in 1967. Called Pro Grafica Arte, the gallery dealt in master prints and drawings. In 1975, she opened a gallery on Spring Street in New York's SoHo district. She gave some of the artists in the movement their first solo shows: Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson...
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Large Venezuelan Expressionist Oil Painting Diego Barboza Latin American Master
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Diego Barboza was born the Carabobo street of Maracaibo, Venezuela on February 4, 1945. He was a Venezuelan Neo Figurative Painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in Venezuelan art history. Diego Barboza opened a new chapter in Latin America, beyond the surreal or the magical realism of the Modern Latin American Masters. He created a new language of dislocation and transgression. Personages became distorted to the point that was very exaggerated forms His figures twisted and contorted without losing their presence or their pull. Extremities muscles, and bones burst into an explosive compound of divergent and convergent lines. Through eruptive brushstrokes and fractured outlines. Barboza created a world of illusions.
Barboza was born into a upper-middle-class family. He stopped going to school at 12 years old, and he registered himself at the School of Visual Art in the City of Maracaibo Venezuela. Barboza studied at the School of Visual Arts in Caracas, Venezuela. Barboza began his training as an artist at age 12 in his native Maracaibo when he left formal education to enroll in the then School of Plastic Arts of Zulia, then Julio Arraga School of Plastic Arts, where he was a student in the modeling, collage and Drawing of Angelina Curiel. His first collages, in the sixties, show the influence of American Pop Art. In 1967 he exhibited at the Ateneo de Caracas his series 'Los Ratones', a proposal then 'criticized by critics as unprecedented in Venezuela'. In his tribute to the film "Nosferatu" Friedrich Murnau included 32 drawings as well as two-dimensional objects. In 1968 he moved to London where he studied at the London College of Printing. From that time is his '30 Girls with Nets', an action in which 30 students of the London College of Printing, dressed in black and covered by white nets, toured London public places, behaving naturally. His 'street expressions', which he later called 'poetic actions', symbolized a breakdown of social restraints through unusual behaviors that sought to provoke public reactions. Upon his return to Venezuela in 1973, Barboza continues with this line of work, being recognized as one of the initiators of Venezuelan conceptual art. In the 1980's Diego Barboza turned to painting, the New Venezuelan Figuration. Here belongings and the feminine figure fill the work of that time, in which he embodied his intimacy and daily life through scenes of furnishings and flowers that included objects from his workshop and home. His nudes were made from live model, then to follow the path of distortion resulting in their unmistakable females: a figure that represented their personal way of appreciating beauty. Barboza presented his first individual exhibition at the Centro de Bellas Artes of Maracaibo Venezuela. In 1963, he traveled to London when the Conceptual Art movement started, he had the support of the London New Art Lab Gallery. On March 7, 1970 Barboza displayed his first work on Conceptual Art, which he called Art of Action. In London with the performance of 30 Girls with nets (30 Muchachas con redes). His second work was Nets and Hats in markets and restaurants (Con sombreros y redes en mercados y restaurantes). In London UK. His third The Centerpiece (El Ciempies) and the fourth Expression on a laundry-mat (Expresiones en una lavandería)
In 1974. Baboza returned to Venezuela. Where he presented two very important Conceptual Art works: The Armadillo Box (La Caja del Cachicamo) and from the School of Athens to the New School of Caracas (De la Escuela de Atenas a la Nueva Escuela de Caracas). Closing his cycle of Conceptual Art creation. IN Venezuela a sort of impromptu academy started up at Claudio Perna’s house. Eugenio Espinoza, Roberto Obregón, Antonieta Sosa, Alfred Wenemoser, Yeni and Nan, Sigfredo Chacón, Diego Barboza, Luis Villamizar, Margherita D’Amico, Pedro Terán, Alfredo del Mónaco, as well as international figures who happened to be visiting Venezuela such as Antoni Muntadas, Charlotte Moorman, and Roman Polanski would gather there. Venezuela, especially Caracas, was a rich field of action for modernism in South America. Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction, Op art and Kinetic Art dominated through crucial figures like Jesús Rafael Soto, Gego, Alejandro Otero, and Carlos Cruz Diez, the country’s kinetic art made a fundamental contribution internationally. The Greater London Arts Association and the Arts Council of Great Britain did several exhibitions of (North, Central, South, London, Wales, Scotland and Ulster) to show the actual Visual Arts in all of the United Kingdom and Diego Barboza was invited for this event with a solo exhibition, expressions around a cylinder (Expresiones alrededor de un cilindro).
Diego has made numerous solo and group exhibitions, obtaining rewards since 1963. He is represented in the most important museums of Venezuela, as well as in England, Brazil, Colombia and Cuba. In 1986 he was awarded the Municipal Visual Arts Award of the Municipal Council of the Federal District and in 1997 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts granted by the National Council of Culture, CONAC.
Select Group Exhibitions
1964 Ateneo de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela
1965 Salón Arturo Michelena, Valencia, Venezuela
1968 Salón Oficial Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela
1971 Art Spectrum London, London, Great Britain
1972 Serpentine Gallery, London, Great Britain
1973 Midland Group Gallery, London, Great Britain
1974 Galería BANAP, Caracas, Venezuela
1975 Casa de Las Américas, La Habana, Cuba
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
Galería de Arte Nuevo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1976 Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Museo de la Tertulia, Cali, Colombia
Bienal de Venecia, Venecia, Italy
1979 Centro de Artes y Comunicación, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1980 Galería NBC, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
1981 Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Medellín, Colombia
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela
1986 Museo de Arte La Rinconada, Caracas, Venezuela
1989 Galería Venzor, Chicago, Illinois, USA
1990 Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile
1992 Ambrosino Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
1993 Museo de Arte de Petare, Caracas, Venezuela
Centro de Arte Lia Bermúdez, Maracaibo, Venezuela
1994 Galería Namia Mondolfi, Caracas, Venezuela
1995 Galería Art Nouveau, Maracaibo, Venezuela
Galería Cesar Sassòn, Caracas, Venezuela
Maremares Resort, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela
Galería Durban, Caracas, Venezuela
Galería Odalys, Caracas, Venezuela
1996 Centro de Arte Grupo Li, Caracas, Venezuela
Galería Uno, Caracas, Venezuela
Centro Cultural Consolidado, Caracas, Venezuela
Espacios Unión, Caracas, Venezuela
Hebraica, Caracas, Venezuela
1997 Sociedad Dramática, Maracaibo, Venezuela, Venezuela
CELARG, Caracas, Venezuela
Galería Ocre Arte, Caracas, Venezuela
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo , Maracay, Venezuela
Galería Medicci, Caracas, Venezuela
Awards
1963 Premio Estímulo - IX Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela
1964 Premio José Ortìn Rodríguez - X Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela
1965 Primer Premio de Dibujo - III Salón Pez Dorado, Caracas, Venezuela
1968 Premio Henrique Otero Vizcarrondo - XXIV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano Museo de Bellas Artes,
1973 Premio Emilio Boggio...
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Oil on canvas, Hand signed on stretcher bar verso,
Gallery label verso (Bennett Roberts Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA) affixed verso,
canvas: 45"h x 42"w, overall (with frame): 46"h x 43"w.
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PAINT Abstract Belgian Contemporary Oil Painting Ellen De Meutter Woman Artist
Located in Surfside, FL
Ellen De Meutter
Paint 2, 2007
Acrylic, ink and oil on canvas
31.5 x 23.6 in (80.0 x 59.9 cm)
Provenance: Secrets & Lies show at her American gallery Roberts & Tilton, LA in 2007
Ellen De Meutter (1981) teaches painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. In 2006-2007 she followed the HISK programme in Ghent, in 2013-2014 she did a residency at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.
De Meutter is represented by Tim Van Laere Gallery since 2006. (they represent Tal R, Marcel Dzama, Tomasz Kowalski and Franz West) Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in Belgium, the United States, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. In 2010 she had her first solo museum exhibition in Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens.
Ellen De Meutter alters her viewer's reality by presenting a language in which she classifies the figures, shapes and colors from her personal world into a captivating utopia. Contrary to current trends in Flemish art, De Meutter is not simply relaying an anecdote; she composes unique imagery that allows her to experiment with the placement of the subject and unique treatments of her medium. De Meutter's repertoire of vivid, semi-neon colors contrast the muted grays blacks and grays on which they lay. These seemingly energetic colors are at once enhanced by the dark undertones of the canvas below, while simultaneously insinuating a concealed gravity of subject. Belgian art critic and curator, Luk Lambrecht remarks on De Meutter's painting: "she folds back 'her' world onto itself, into a solid mass of color from which, very slowly, vague contours emerge, which safeguard our expectations about looking at an image." De Meutter's scenes are reminiscent of schoolyard games, incorporating a series of text and symbols. By combing figurative imagery with basic abstraction, Ellen De Meutter creates wildly successful compositions that allude to her comprehensive understanding of contemporary painting. She was included in the show, Tomorrow is a long time: Ellen De Meutter, Gelitin, Kati Heck, Anton Henning, Friedrich Kunath...
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1963 French Japanese Art Brut Abstract Oil Painting Akira Kito Diable et Rouge
Located in Surfside, FL
Akira Kito, Japanese, 1925-1994
Diable et Roge
Oil on Canvas
Titled, signed, and dated 1963 verso
Hand signed lower center
Dimensions: 32 x 12 3/4 in. (81.3 x 32.4 cm.), Frame: 33 1...
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1960s Modern Abstract Paintings
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Large Richard Merkin Painting Harlem Jazz Club, New Yorker Magazine Cover Artist
By Richard Merkin
Located in Surfside, FL
Richard Marshall Merkin (American, 1938-2009)
Gladys and Half-Pint
Hand signed 'Merkin' (center right),
Titled, inscribed, dated, and initialed 'GLADYS BENTLEY AND FRANKIE 'HALF-PINT' JAXON 1997/R.M.' verso.
Oil on canvas
37 1/2 x 72 in. (95.3 x 182.9 cm)
framed 39 1/4 x 74 x 2 in.
Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tailcoat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.
Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design.
He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927).
Richard Merkin, Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Museums and Selected Collections :
The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
First city Bank, Chicago, Ill
Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN
Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI
McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA
Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma
Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Selected Publications :
1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow.
1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center)
RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting
special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor)
breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short and Krazy Kat...
Category
1990s American Modern Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil Pastel, Oil
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21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
$6,800
Oil on Canvas “Arroyo 14”
By Frank Arnold
Located in Fresno, CA
" Arroyo 14" is 72” x 60”. A rich sienna and ochre figure centered on a textured field of light yellows and beige. Frank Arnold’s paintings exhibit the highest quality materials for ...
Category
2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Oil on Canvas “Black 5” by abstract-figurative artist, Frank Arnold
By Frank Arnold
Located in Fresno, CA
" Black 5" is 36” x 36”. Solo figure, head and shoulders in bold white outline. Frank Arnold’s paintings exhibit the highest quality materials for a truly archival piece, created to ...
Category
2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Oil on Canvas "Center"
By Frank Arnold
Located in Fresno, CA
“Center” is 60”x48” The impasto surface stages a range of yellow and gold earth tones. Frank Arnold’s paintings exhibit the highest quality materials for a truly archival piece, crea...
Category
2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
Tempted
By Frank Arnold
Located in Fresno, CA
"Tempted" Oil on Canvas is a sienna figure and foreground on a pale blue field. Frank Arnold is thought by many to be one of the foremost abstract figurative painters and sculptors o...
Category
2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
$48,800