Cleve Gray

Cleve Gray, Perne #7, Acrylic on Canvas, 1978, Abstract Expressionism

1978

This work on paper by Cleve Gray contains rich fields of saturated color punctuated by calligraphic gestures and sweeping brushstrokes. "Untitled" from 1999 consist of acrylic on Ar...

This is an abstract acrylic painting by Nicolas Carone titled 'Cavalcade,' which is from 2009, the period of the painter's life. 'Cavalcade' is a beautiful composition of splashed black and white paint. The painting is an excellent scale and is very dynamic. Carone was one of the last surviving Abstract Expressionist painters known for his figurative style based on abstract principles. The figure acts as the foundation that shapes his lyrical brushstrokes, layered drips and delicate washes. His later works successfully integrate the classical figurative tradition of his early training with the spontaneous and instinctual painting process of his AbEx contemporaries and friends such as Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Conrad Marca-Relli. Nicholas Carone is best known for his association with the New York School of Abstract Expressionists who came to prominence in the 1950s. He was born to Italian immigrants in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1917, the eldest of seven children. He was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey and began attending art school on the nights and weekends at age eleven at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in Manhattan. After high school, he studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design and with Hans Hofmann before serving in World War II. In 1947 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome and spent three years in Italy on the G.I. Bill starting in 1948. In 1949, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. In Rome, living on Via Margutta, he met Alberto Burri, Conrad Marc-Relli and the surrealist Matta...

"Blood Harmony" from 2021 by Shane Tolbert is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting from the artist's most recent body of work. Blood Harmony is a term that references the sonic effect of when two or more relations harmonize together; The Louvin Brothers, a legendary sibling duo of country music, was one of the most well known example of this effect. The painting in a sense harmonizes broad, colorful stripe of color, in reds, greens, and browns, each applied using decalcomania (a painting technique developed by the surrealists which leaves a lot of the paints organization on the support up to chance) except for a single, bold, hand-painted red stripe just right of center. The painting insists on its own surface, blocking the possibility of an image plane being read into the surface of the painting, but it stands bodily at about 6 feet, reminding the viewer of a blockade or fence. Tolbert references his own space in this work, the space of his own garden, but also addresses art making and art history in a sensory composition. Tolbert navigates a vibrant intersection of modernist aesthetics, experimental paint handling, and a palette that relates to the high desert landscape of New Mexico, his home since 2017. For these new paintings and collages, Tolbert draws inspiration from his interactions and relationships with Santa Fe and the neighboring mountain towns, creating visual passages by way of movement and marks on the canvas. In a distinct shift from his last body of work, Tolbert points his observation of time from a geological and cosmic scale to a more human realm, partially guided by the isolation and contraction of time and space during the pandemic. There is a focus on time as directly related to his body: the new construction of a flower garden at his home, the course of meteorological time and its unpredictability, the difficulty of watching a parent pass from afar, to the joys of life’s milestones. As Tolbert elaborates: “This current practice of painting and collage touches on recent life events -- from the monumental to the prosaic -- interpreting memories into abstract compositions. My paintings at times are fussy and meticulous, but also seemingly unlabored, as they grasp at a visual equivalence to process collective moments of our dispassionate and chaotic world, a record.” While Tolbert’s compositions remain formally driven, he plays with and pulls at his medium to create hotly abstract paintings. He employs a paint application technique he has been utilizing and developing for over a decade: one that combines traditional modes of painting with pliable acrylic paint pours...

"Untitled", 2020, by Shane Tolbert is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting from the artist's most recent body of work. In this series, Tolbert navigates a vibrant intersection of modernist aesthetics, experimental paint handling, and a palette that relates to the high desert landscape of New Mexico, his home since 2017. For these new paintings and collages, Tolbert draws inspiration from his interactions and relationships with Santa Fe and the neighboring mountain towns, creating visual passages by way of movement and marks on the canvas. "Untitled" specifically references a certain affinity for geological time - the layering and stratification of color referencing the same in our Earth's land. Tolbert paints this painting as an exercise in endurance, beginning on one edge of the canvas, with a brush loaded with the two present colors, and running along its length as smoothly as possible. Tolbert's penchant for process painting is as honest as can be in this work. In a distinct shift from his last body of work, Tolbert points his observation of time from a geological and cosmic scale to a more human realm, partially guided by the isolation and contraction of time and space during the pandemic. There is a focus on time as directly related to his body: the new construction of a flower garden at his home, the course of meteorological time and its unpredictability, the difficulty of watching a parent pass from afar, to the joys of life’s milestones. As Tolbert elaborates: “This current practice of painting and collage touches on recent life events -- from the monumental to the prosaic -- interpreting memories into abstract compositions. My paintings at times are fussy and meticulous, but also seemingly unlabored, as they grasp at a visual equivalence to process collective moments of our dispassionate and chaotic world, a record.” While Tolbert’s compositions remain formally driven, he plays with and pulls at his medium to create hotly abstract paintings. He employs a paint application technique he has been utilizing and developing for over a decade: one that combines traditional modes of painting with pliable acrylic paint pours...

Southern California-based artist Gary Lang descends from generations of light and space, California based artists. He creates his abstract paintings of sa...

Gary Lang's CONCENTRICSQUAREFIVE from 2020 is an acrylic painting on panel. Southern California-based, Gary Lang descends from generations of light and sp...

Abstract painting wherein a calligraphic brushstroke delineates a mountaintop.

This is a powerful, even fierce, work by one of the greats of Abstract Expressionism and masters of minimalism. Cleve Gray (1918-2004) was admired for his large-scale, vividly colorful and lyrically gestural abstract compositions and achieved his greatest critical recognition in the late 1960's and 70's after working for many years in a comparatively conservative late-Cubist style. Inspired in the 1960's by artists like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Gray began to produce large paintings using...

Cleve Gray Ceres 1, 1966 Greece Series Acrylic on canvas 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches

CLEVE GRAY Floating Red, 1990 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 inches

Cleve Gray Reverse Drawing 1 (blue), 1966 Reverse Drawing Series Mixed media on paper 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 inches

Cleve Gray Roman Wall (blue), 1979 Roman Walls Series Mixed media on paper 22 1/2 x 30 inches

Signed, dated , and titled verso: Gray - '90 / "Air Things Wear that Build This World" / 60 x 60 / acrylic

Purvis Young (1943-2010) Mixed media collage oil on poster board painting. Painted atop a voting advertisement sign. Signed in multiple places on piece "Young". Purvis Young (1943 – 2010) was an African American artist from the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida. Young's work, often a blend of collage and painting, utilizes found objects and the experience of African Americans in the south. Purvis Young painted on scrap lumber, old doors, tax forms, street signs, cardboard and plywood that he scavenged from the streets and vacant lots of Overtown, the historically black neighborhood where he lived in Miami, Florida. Young gained recognition as a cult contemporary artist, with a collectors' following that included Jane Fonda, Damon Wayans, Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and others. In 2006 a feature documentary titled Purvis of Overtown was produced about his life and work. His work is found in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the High Museum of Art, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and others. In 2018, he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Purvis Young was born in Liberty City, a neighborhood of Miami, Florida, on February 2, 1943. As a young boy, his uncle introduced him to drawing, but Young lost interest quickly. He never attended high school. As a teenager, Young served three years (1961–64) in prison at North Florida's Raiford State Penitentiary for breaking and entering. While in prison he would regain his interest in art and began drawing and studying art books. When released, he began to produce thousands of small drawings, which he kept in shopping carts and later glued into discarded books and magazines that he found on the streets. He proceeded to move into the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. Young became attracted to a vacant alley called Goodbread Alley, which was named after the Jamaican bakeries that once occupied the street; he started living there in 1971. In the early 1970s, Young found inspiration in the mural movements of Chicago and Detroit, and decided to create a mural of inspiration Overtown. He had never painted before, but inspiration struck and he began to create paintings and nailing them to the boarded up storefronts that formed the alley. He painted on wood he found on the streets and occasionally paintings would "disappear" from the wall, but Young didn't mind. About two years after starting the mural, tourists started visiting the alley, mainly white tourists. Occasionally, Young sold paintings to visitors - tourists and collectors alike - right off the wall. The mural garnered media attention, including the attention of millionaire Bernard Davis, owner of the Miami Art Museum. Davis became a patron of Young, providing him with painting supplies as well. Davis died in 1973, leaving Young a local celebrity in Miami. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he explored other inspirations by watching historical documentaries about war, the Great Depression, commerce, and Native American conflicts and struggles in the United States. In 1999 the Rubell family, notable art collectors from New York, purchased the entire content of Young's studio, a collection of almost 3,000 pieces. In 2008 the Rubell's donated 108 works to Morehouse College In 2015, The Bass Museum of Art announced that it is donating almost 400 pieces of Young's art to the permanent collection in the Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida. The foundation is located in Lyric Theater in Overtown. Young found strong influence in Western art history and voraciously absorbed books from his nearby public library by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin, El Greco, Daumier and Pablo Picasso. His work was vibrant and colorful, and was described as appearing like fingerpainting. Reoccurring themes in his work were angels, wild horses, and urban landscapes. Through his works, he expressed social and racial issues, and served as an outspoken activist about politics and bureaucracy. Two Purvis Young works appear on the 2018 David Byrne album "American Utopia." He is included in the collection of the Metro-Miami Dade Cultural Center. Since its 1970 start, the Permanent Art Collection has been recognized nationally as a fearless reflection of Miami’s diversity, and an invaluable chronicle of its artistic and social history. Their collection includes Elizabeth Catlett, Purvis Young and Emilio Sanchez. His work has since been included in numerous private collections and museums and was championed by the Joy Moos gallery, an influential gallery specializing in folk art, street art, self-taught visionary, outsider art and contemporary art (Galerie Moos, Montréal; Joy Moos Gallery, Miami. Joy was a recognized photographer, jewelry designer and interior decorator. She wrote a catalogue on Purvis Young and promoted Cuban artist Ramon Carulla. Her gallery also showed major contemporary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg of Captiva Island and Edward Ruscha of Los Angeles. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2020 "Prophets and Angels": Purvis Young & Édouard Vuillard, Shin Gallery New York, NY 2019 "Personal Structures" Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy 2019 "Purvis Young" solo exhibition James Fuentes LLC, New York, NY 2018/2019 "Purvis Young" solo exhibition, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL (for Art Basel) 2018 "History Refused to Die" Group Exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC 2017 "Revelations" Group Exhibition, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA 2015 "50 for 50," LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, CA 2003 “African American Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum,” New York Historical Society 1997 “Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Dr. Kurt Gitter and Alice Rae Yelen,” DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA “Bearing Witness: African-American Vernacular Art of the South,” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY “Purvis Young-The Streets of Overtown: 1996 “Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South - The Arnett Collection,” Emory University 1994 “Purvis Young: Books and Works on Paper,” Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present,” New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA “Purvis Young”, Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France “Purvis Young: Art and Real Life,” Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany “Purvis Young Works of Paper (The Books),” Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York City, NY “Sam Doyle, William Hawkins...

William Baziotes (1912 - 1963) Untitled, circa 1935-1940 Oil on board 14 x 19 3/4 inches Illegible Inscription present to the verso Provenance: Previously from the estate of Consta...

CLAUDE GAVEAU (1906 - 1970) A beautiful and large signed oil on canvas by the important french painter Claude Gaveau. The work is signed upper right and unlined and unrestored on its original canvas. Title: “Still Life” Signature: Signed upper right Medium: Oil on original canvas Provenance: Private french collection Size: c. 24 x 29 inches unframed Claude Gaveau (1906 - 1970) is a French painter born in Neuilly-sur-Marne in 1940. The painter was born near Paris and studied there as well as in Belgium. He comes from a family of artists, his grandfather was the creator of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He is passionate since very young about painting and entered the Ecole des Arts Appliqués in Paris in 1955 where he studied mural art for five years, stained glass, tapestry, mosaic and fresco. In 1960, he studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, becoming equally accomplished in oil painting, watercolor, drawing and lithography, pastel and gouache. Influenced by great Post Impressionist painters such as Paul Cézanne, George Braque and Raoul Dufy, Gaveau gets inspired as well by music and lyricism. His talent was quickly recognized, in 1963 he won his first prize and obtained a scholarship from the Academy of Antwerp, Belgium which allowed him to study Flemish painting in Brussels. In 1965, with only 25 years, he made his first solo exhibition at the Angle Aigu Gallery in Paris. His career took a real turn in 1968 when he was nominated for the "la Critique Parrainé" Award by the Saint Placide Gallery in Paris. A recurrent traveler, the landscapes he observes all around the world allow him to broaden his artistic palette. Other exhibitions of his work followed during the 1960’s and 1970’s in France with the Galerie Vauban in Dijon in 1967, 1968 and 1970; with the Galerie Saint Placide in Paris in 1968; with the Galerie Marc Hudier in Belfort in 1970; and three one-man shows with the Galerie La Belle Gabrielle in Paris in 1972, 1975 and 1978. In 1980 Claude Gaveau had his first one-man exhibition with Wally Findlay Galleries...

Signed, dated , and titled verso: Gray - '90 / "Air Things Wear that Build This World" / 60 x 60 / acrylic

CLEVE GRAY Floating Red, 1990 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 inches

Cleve Gray Ceres 1, 1966 Greece Series Acrylic on canvas 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches

Cleve Gray Conjugations, 1975 Vermont Series Mixed media on paper 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches each

PROVENANCE: Ensign Bickford Aerospace Corp, Simsbury, CT Threnody (1973-74) is a 250-foot-wide site-specific painting created by Cleve Gray for the opening of the Neuberger Museum of Art.  At that time, college students across the country were demonstrating against the conflict in Vietnam, a war that they felt to be unjust and inhumane. An active anti-war supporter himself, Gray saw this as an opportunity to express his hope for humanity’s spiritual and emotional healing. Threnody is a lament for the dead on both sides of the war. Although the theme of Threnody was conditioned by current events, Gray sought a more reconciliatory image and mood. Somber grounds of red, black, green and violet delineate the four walls in the space that he envisioned as a cathedral.  Tall vertical forms engaged in a “dance of death and life...

Abstract painting wherein a calligraphic brushstroke delineates a mountaintop.