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David Rankin
Australian Abstract Expressionist Gouache Painting Charcoal on Shaped Paper

1990

About the Item

David Rankin American (b. 1946) Untitled (Black on gray) (1990) Gouache and charcoal on paper signed lower left 19 x 15 inches Rankin is a New York-based, British-born Australian post-war and contemporary artist known for his expressionistic abstract paintings. His work can be categorized by his use of quick, loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of scribbles on a page. Rankin works predominantly in oil painting and acrylic on canvas, but also works with paper, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities across the world, including New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Mexico, Vienna, Berlin and Cologne, as well as all over Australia. Represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections and museums, David Rankin’s work is featured in Australia’s leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. David Rankin was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in 1946 then emigrated to Australia with his family in 1948. He spent his childhood in the 1950s in the semi-rural Port Hacking region South of Sydney and his teenage years in country New South Wales, from Hay, Wagga Wagga and Albury in the South to Bourke and Brewarrina in the North. Rankin is self-taught, developing his techniques and ideas in the outback towns of his youth. He was inspired by the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Klee as well as being influenced by the history of Buddhism and Asian art. In his travels before he arrived in Sydney in 1967 he developed a concept of what he wanted to achieve as an Australian artist. His dream was to express the anima, the life spirit or the essence of God in all nature. As an Australian artist he believed could bring the elements of Western Art together with an understanding and love for the cultures of Asia and the Australian Aborigine. He also felt that as Australia was closer to Asia than Europe it made sense to think about the art of Indian, Chinese and Japanese artists, and that one could not be an authentic articulate Australian artist without a love and respect for the artistic and spiritual expressions of the various Aboriginal artists, peoples and cultures. His work combined elements of Abstract Expressionist painting with Jewish and Aboriginal influences. In 1979 his first wife, Jennifer Mary Roberts (née Haynes) died. Rankin subsequently met his current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parents being survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife's death fused into what he calls "the dark blessing of my life." The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted judaica imagery, Black Menorah and Black Tefillin and as a testament to his love for her created his Husband and Wife Series including Husband and Wife Triptych III, and Husband and Wife – Ying and Yang. In 1989 Rankin moved with his wife to New York City. From their home in New York they continue to explore both their Australian roots and culture and the opportunities and challenges of being part of an international community. Their three children, including celebrated artist Jessica Rankin, also live in New York. David's daughter-in-law is artist Julie Mehretu. In the past 30 years Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities including Paris, Beijing, New York, Cologne and throughout Australia. He is represented in many of the world's leading collections and museums, including the National Gallery of Victoria. He was selected as Australia's official representative in the UNESCO Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition celebrations that toured the world's capitals. He was featured in the Salon de Mai in Paris and the Chicago Art Fair. Among the many prizes and awards he has been honored with is the 1983 Wynne Prize, Australia's premier landscape prize. Recently an English-German monograph on his work titled "The Walls of the Heart: The Work and Life of David Rankin" was published by US critic and art historian Dore Ashton. In 2005-2006 a major exhibition of Rankin's art, curated by Dore Ashton, toured through public galleries in Australia. Among his many commissioned works are The Scorched Earth, 1984–85, oil on canvas, diptych at the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. The Committee for Bosnia, commissioned a poster, A Day for Bosnia, at The University of Chicago. His oil paintings, large watercolours and ceramics appear at the New York Vista Hotel. In September 2013, a book by Dore Ashton on David Rankin's work titled David Rankin: The New York Years was released. He has shown his work at Charles Nodrum Gallery, Richmond, Australia, Mossgreen Gallery and other leading Australian galleries.
  • Creator:
    David Rankin (1946, Australian)
  • Creation Year:
    1990
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 19 in (48.26 cm)Width: 15 in (38.1 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38215617982

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Budd Hopkins, American (1931-2011) 'City Sun II', 1969 Oil painting on canvas. Hand signed and dated lower left. Verso: Artist, title, and year in pencil on stretcher. Dimensions: 36" H x 52" w. Frame: 37.25" h x 53.25" w. Budd Hopkins was one of the leading proponents of the "hard-edge" abstract minimalist school of painting in the 1950s and 1960s, Budd Hopkins (born 1931) created works that show the strong influence of Jackson Pollock and other leading painters of the Abstract Expressionism movement. Hopkins' paintings are now in numerous major collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Hirshhorn Collection in Washington, DC. Recently, he has also been recognized for his research into the matter of UFOs and one of his books, "The Intruders", printed by Random House, was on the New York Times best-seller list and was the basis for a television show on CBS. Born in 1931, he is a graduate of Linsly Military Institute (now Linsly School) in 1949 and Oberlin College in 1953. He first displayed artistic abilities when, as a child recovering from a long-term illness, he began to create sculptures of ships made out of modeling clay. But it wasn't until he arrive at Oberlin that he made a serious study of art. Later, Hopkins included abstracted figures in his sculptural pieces. While moving away from Abstract Expressionism, Hopkins retained in his work the use of intense colors and hard-edged forms. His works of the 1980s, including Temples and Guardians, featured these "sentinels" who were, according to Hopkins, "participating in a frozen ritual, fixed – absolutely – within a privileged space..." Though Hopkins denied any connection, some critics viewed these ritualistic pieces as an extension of Hopkins' fascination with alien beings. Hopkins viewed his sculpted guardians not as human per se, but as magical, fierce, noble robots of the unconscious. He settled in New York after obtaining his degree and has had a residence there ever since. He and his wife, April Kingsley, and their daughter, Grace, divide their time between their home at Cape Cod, Mass., and that in New York City. In his work, he travels widely. He has exhibited in England, Finland, Italy and Switzerland. In 1963, Hopkins was selected by the Columbia Broadcasting System as one of the 15 painters featured in the network's first television special on American art. In 1958, Art News picked him as one of 12 Americans for exhibition in Spoleto, Italy, in the "Festival of Two Worlds." His brilliance has won him a number of fellowships and awards. In 1972, the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Council awarded him its Commission Prize. In 1976, he received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting and in '79 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He also won a special project grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in 1982. He was friends with Robert Ryman and many of the other 10th street avant garde artists. He was an original member of March Gallery which showed Alice Baber, Elaine de Kooning, Mark di Suvero, Lester Johnson, Matsumi Kanemitsu. His work was handled by Poindexter Gallery. (a major gallery founded in 1955 in New York City by Elinor Poindexter. The gallery specialized in sculpture, abstract, and figurative art and featured the works of such artists as Richard Diebenkorn, Jules Olitski, Nell Blaine, Al Held, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Earl Kerkam, Milton Resnick and Robert De Niro, among others. His art has been featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Bronx Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum, Corcoran Gallery, Guggenheim Museum, Queens Museum in New York, and the Public Library of New York. He was included in Young America 1960: Thirty American Painters Under Thirty-Six buy Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC. Artists included: Sonia Gechtoff, Edward Giobbi, Ron Gorchov, James Harvey, Budd Hopkins, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Robert Natkin, Rudy Pozzatti, Dean Richardson, Frank Roth, William Wiley, and Noriko Yamamoto...
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