Skip to main content
Video Loading
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 16

Edward Marecak
Floating Shapes, Abstract Floral Oil Painting by Edward Marecak, Pink Black Blue

1985

About the Item

Original vintage 1985 abstract oil painting by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) with geometric imagery in colors of coral/pink, black, brown, green, blue, golden yellow, orange, purple and red. Oil on board, signed and dated lower right. Image size is 41 ¼ x 35 ¾, custom frame measures 41 ¾ x 36 ¼. Estate of the Artist, Edward Marecak Rather than pursue fame, Edward Marecak directed his zeal toward fostering younger generations in the principles of art as well as his simple philosophies. Moreover, his teaching salary allowed him to ply his prodigious talent at whatever he pleased, instead of bending to the dictates of trends and sales. Having inherited his faith in education from his Slovakian immigrant parents, Marecak could add the shaping of lives to his mastery of art forms, including lithographs, monoprints, drawings, hooked rugs, ceramics, paintings, wood sculptures, stained-glass windows, and jewelry. While exhibiting in his lifetime, he was, in his wife’s words, “his own greatest collector,” but recent shows and his popularity at the Kirkland Museum have positioned Marecak posthumously among Colorado’s preeminent modernists. Growing up in the farming community of Brunswick, Ohio, he showed early artistic promise, hired by the National Youth Adminstration to document historic barns. In 1946, Marecak came to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center for a year and after a semester interlude at Cranbrook returned to study lithography with Lawrence Barrett. There he also met his future wife and sometime collaborator, ceramicist Theresa Madonna (Donna) Fortin. Given the opportunity to teach a summer course at the University of Colorado, he decided to obtain a teaching certificate at the University of Denver and subsequently embarked on his twenty-five-year career in the Denver Public School system. As a child, Marecak was enthralled by the Carpathian tales of magic and supernatural beings told by his grandmother. As with other artists with roots in Eastern Europe, his artistic turn to folk tradition would free him from learned practices of perspective and modeling in favor of flat patterns within patterns and brilliant, throbbing color. While others ventured further into abstraction, Marecak stylized figurative elements into crowded compositions that appeared like mosaic or stained glass. As he matured, he could declare, “I am still very much a Byzantine designer and my joy with what color can do grows all the time.” The traceries of strong outlines and bold shapes provide compartments for vibrant colors, contrasts, and rough textures that can scarcely be contained.
  • Creator:
    Edward Marecak (1919 - 1993)
  • Creation Year:
    1985
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 41.25 in (104.78 cm)Width: 35.75 in (90.81 cm)Depth: 0.4 in (1.02 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
    very good to vintage condition.
  • Gallery Location:
    Denver, CO
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: DCG-222381stDibs: LU2735343532
More From This SellerView All
  • Fertility Goddesses, Abstract Nude Figures 1950s Oil Painting, Pink, Blue, Green
    By Edward Marecak
    Located in Denver, CO
    Fertility Goddesses, original abstract figurative painting, vintage 1950, by 20th century Denver modernist artist, Edward Marecak (1919-1993). ,Three nude female figures with fruit. ...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Precipitation, 1960s Abstract Oil Painting of Floating Shapes, Purple White Gray
    By Emil James Bisttram
    Located in Denver, CO
    Original 1961 mid-century modern abstract painting by New Mexico Transcendentalist, Emil Bisttram (1895-1976). Abstract floating shapes painted in shades of purple, blue, gray, white and black. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 33 x 37 x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 32 ½ x 36 ¼ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Emil Bisttram grew up in the tenements of New York City after his family emigrated from Hungary when he was a young boy. Bisttram studied at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. During his training, Emil studied under Ivan Olinsky, Leon Kroll, Howard Giles, and Jay Hambidge. Bisttram later taught at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, Parson's School of Design, and at the Master Institute of the Roerich Museum in New York. Bisttram opened the nation's first freelance advertising art agency by the age of twenty-one. However, he soon abandoned the business in pursuit of a career in Fine Art. In 1930, the artist made his first visit to Taos, New Mexico, where he reportedly found himself "blocked" by the open spaces, intense light, and color that define the region. In 1931, he traveled to Mexico where he studied mural painting with Diego Rivera on a Guggenheim Fellowship. While Emil was in Mexico, his wife lived in Taos where the couple established permanent residence upon his return. In Taos, Bisttram opened the area's first commercial art gallery, the Heptagon Gallery. He also founded the avante-garde Taos School of Art, later known as the Bisttram School of Fine Art. In 1934, Bisttram was among artists selected to paint murals for the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.). While commissioned by the W.P.A., Bisttram worked on murals in the County Courthouse in Taos and he completed a mural in the Justice Department Building in Washington, D.C. Although he continued with representational painting, much of Bisttram's work in the late 1930's became increasingly abstract. Along with Raymond Jonson and seven other artists, Bisttram founded the Transcendental Painting Group...
    Category

    1960s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • 1950s Abstract Oil Painting, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Black, Vertical Horizontal
    By Paul Kauvar Smith
    Located in Denver, CO
    Abstract painting in blue, pink, yellow, green, and black by Paul Kauvar Smith (1893-1977). Oil on board. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 29 ½ x 23 ¾ x 2 inche...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Geometric Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Masks And Flowers, Semi Abstract Vintage 1984 Painting, Red Yellow Green Pink
    By Edward Marecak
    Located in Denver, CO
    Masks And Flowers, vintage original 1984 oil painting on board by Edward Marecak (1919-1993), semi abstract, cubist style painting of tribal mas...
    Category

    1980s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Diana and the Three Fates, Vintage 1970s Semi Abstract Figural Oil Painting
    By Edward Marecak
    Located in Denver, CO
    Diana and the Three Fates, vintage 1970s semi abstract oil painting on board by 20th century Denver artist, Edward Marecak (1919-1993). Female nude figure of the the Roman virgin goddess, Diana, the protector of childbirth reclining with vases of flowers and the Three Fates looking on. Semi abstract, cubist style painting in bright colors of pink, fuchsia, green, yellow, orange, blue, brown, purple and red. Unframed, custom framing is available. In situ photos are frame mocks ups, the piece is currently unframed. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of Edward Marecak Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier ouevre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee, and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish...
    Category

    1970s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • New York City Abstract Skyline, Semi Abstract Night Scene Cityscape Oil Painting
    By Charles Ragland Bunnell
    Located in Denver, CO
    Oil on board painting of abstracted New York City skyline by Charles Ragland Bunnell from 1951. Nocturne cityscape painted in colors of black, shades of blue, and yellow. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 30 ¼ x 12 ¼ x ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 12 ¼ inches. Painting is in good vintage condition - please contact us for detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of Charles Ragland Bunnell Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Charles Bunnell developed a love for art at a very young age. As a child in Kansas City, Missouri, he spent much of his time drawing. When he was unable to find paper he drew on walls and in the margins of textbooks for which he was often fined. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer...
    Category

    1950s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

You May Also Like
  • Feelings. 2019, hardboard, oil, 39x28 cm
    By Dmitry Lavrentjev
    Located in Riga, LV
    Feelings. 2019, hardboard, oil, 39x28 cm
    Category

    2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Cardboard

  • Collection of Three French Oils on Board. "La Cagole, Redoutable & La Corrida".
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Late 20th century collection of three abstract expressionist oils on board by French artist Emmanuelle Bardet. All signed to the front and each dated 1995 and titled to the reverse. The three paintings are titled; La Cagole...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • 'Assemblées', Figures In Motion, Oil on Paper on Board.
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Abstract impressionist oil on paper on board by French artist Chantal Payet. Signed and dated April '96 to the reverse. An interesting and challenging Abstract Impressionist work in...
    Category

    1990s Abstract Impressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Paper, Oil, Board

  • "Redoutable" (Formidable) Colourful French Abstract Expressionist Oil on Board.
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Late 20th century abstract Expressionist oil on board by French artist Emmanuelle Bardet. Signed bottom left and dated 1995 and titled "Redoutable" (Formidable) to the reverse. The a...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Les Brindilles ( Twigs )
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Mid-Century oil on board by 20th century artist Ahlan Achoy, signed bottom left. Ahlan Achoy was known for his figurative art and portraiture often in the cubist style. This colourf...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Kazan, Large scale Aerial Abstract Expressionist View of the Port and City.
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Late 20th Century oil and acrylic abstract expressionist on board by Alexander Dorofeev (called Alex). Signed and dated bottom centre, presented in plain wood frame. A mesmerising a...
    Category

    1990s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Acrylic, Board

Recently Viewed

View All