Enrico Donati

New Year

1992

Signed lower right and dated & titled verso. Enrico Donati, a surrealist and abstract expressionist painter, was born in Milan, Italy in 1909 and died in Manhattan on April 25, 2008. He was known for his association with the surrealist movement of the 1940's, but his artwork continued to transform itself through the many trends that have occurred during his long career. In Italy he attended the Universita degli Studi in Pavia where he studied economics. In 1934, he moved to the United States settling in New York where he studied at the New School for Social Research and the Art Students' League. Considered the surviving dean of the Surrealist Movement and a member of the New York School, Donati painted with Ernst, Matta and Tanguy in the thirties and forties, and in particular with Andre Breton, regarded by many to be the grand master of Surrealism. He helped organize the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme in Paris in 1947 where he exhibited three of his pieces. The Surrealists were known to avoid presenting or representing reality, and put the emphasis on invention and creativity by uncovering the poetic aspect of life with its kaleidoscopic multidimensional images, using reality only to enhance imagination. Donati survived the decline of Surrealism in the late 1940's by adapting his style to current art trends as he worked with new materials and textures throughout the 1950's. One trend with which he became involved was Abstract Expressionism, which originated in the 1940s, and became popular in the 1950s. It was a movement in which artists typically applied paint, rapidly and with force, to large canvases, in an effort to show feelings and emotions. Paint might be applied with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas. Abstract Expressionist work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, although it is actually highly planned. Donati held a retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1961 and went on to exhibit at the Betty Parsons Gallery with other forerunners of American Abstract Expressionism: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock. It was at this time that Donati created some of his most inventive and extraordinary work, some of which was featured in a survey exhibition at the Alter & Gil Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, in January 2000. He has held many teaching positions and has been an active lecturer, while continuing to add to his artistic repertoire. From 1960 to 1962 he was a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, and from 1962 to 1972 a Member of the Yale University Council for the Arts and Architecture. He has had seventy-five one-man shows, among them an exhibit of new paintings at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery (57th St., New York) in the fall of 1997. Donati's work is held in collections throughout the world, and his work has appeared in over 300 articles and publications, two hard cover books...

Signed lower right Agnes Hart was born in Meridan, Connecticut. She studied at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida; at Iowa State University with Josef Presser, Paul Burlin and Lucile...

Signed lower left. This is a large example of a non-objective painting by Rolph Scarlett. Scarlett was a painter of geometric forms and shapes. His intuitive style helped establish ...

Signed lower right. A major exponent of non-objective painting, Rolph Scarlett's career and artistic philosophy is closely linked with the early history of the Solomon R. Guggenhei...

Signed & dated Verso. 1965 Paul Reed in 1970. He favored “staining” untreated canvas. Paul Reed, the last surviving member of the Washington Color School, who explored the complexities of color and form in vibrant bio-morphic and hard-edge abstract paintings, died on Sept. 26 at his home in Phoenix. He was 96. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Jean Reed Roberts. Mr. Reed acquired his public identity as an artist when he was included, along with Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Thomas Downing and Howard Mehring, in “The Washington Color Painters,” a landmark traveling exhibition that began at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1965. All of the other painters had been shown, the year before, in “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” a 31-artist exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized by the critic Clement Greenberg in an effort to write a new chapter in the historic march of abstract art. Like his fellow Washington artists, Mr. Reed rejected the hot, gestural approach of Abstract Expressionism and explored color and abstract forms in a cooler mode. Working with diluted acrylic paint, in discrete series that methodically explored formal issues, he created luminous fields of color by letting the paint bleed into, or stain, untreated canvas. “I have a saying: Pollock dripped, Frankenthaler poured,” he told The Washington Post in 2011, referring to the artist Helen Frankenthaler. “Morris Louis poured. Howard Mehring sprinkled. I blot.” In his first stained series, “Mandala,” color radiated from a circular central image. The nearly 100 paintings in his “Disk” series, which he called “a matrix for exploiting color,” consisted of a central circle and two triangles positioned at the corners of the canvas. Over the next decade he moved to hard-edge geometric zigzags and stripes in the vertical “Upstart” series, color grids and shaped canvases that allowed for more complex experiments in form and color relations. He also made welded steel sculptures and, in the “Quad” series of the 1980s, collaged photographs. “Reed was, in a sense, the ‘little master’ of that first batch of Washington colorists,” the critic Benjamin Forgey wrote in The Washington Post in 1997. “He was a latecomer — he didn’t turn seriously to painting until he was in his mid-30s — but he never considered becoming anything other than an abstract painter. And when he was ready to show, in his early 40s, he was a very good abstract painter indeed.” Mr. Reed gave himself a more modest assessment in an interview with NPR last year. “I’m sort of low man on the totem pole of that group of six,” he said. Paul Allen...

Signed lower right. Provenance: Khromin Estate. Victor Khromin, born in Gatchina City, near St. Petersburg, Russia explored his artistic abilities from the earliest years of his life. The Russian-Finish family into which Victor was born discovered and accepted his talent as something that flowed organically through their family tree. Victor's grandfather was an accomplished artist and a student of Repin at the Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, Russia. The scenery of childhood in a small Finnish village on the outskirts of St. Petersburg continues to inspire Victor throughout his life.Victor went on to study art professionally at the Serov School of Fine Art in Leningrad. While still a student, he actively participated in non-conformist exhibitions, which were illegal during the Soviet Regime. In 1976, Victor became a member of the USSR Union of Professional Artists. This was the only Soviet organization, which could recognize an individual as a career artist. Despite membership, he continued to exhibit his works as part of the Underground Art Movement, which contradicted the code of conduct outlined by the USSR Union of Professional Artists and rejected the only officially accepted style of Socialist Realist. Victor's works stopped being presented for exhibition within official circles of the Soviet Art League. Victor became a target for government harassment and monitoring. The 1985 solo exhibition at the Kudamm Gallery, in Berlin, served as a breaking point in the semi-tolerant relationship that had previously existed between Victor and the USSR Union of Professional Artists. According to the Union, an artist was not allowed to exhibit outside of the USSR without the permission of and censorship by that organization. That same year, Victor lost the position, which he had obtained through the Union. He relocated to a small village called Sinicheno, where over the course of 5 years, he created a series of lyrical pieces. The works were displayed at a solo exhibition at Dianart Gallery in Zurich in 1988, and at Arcole Auction, Paris in 1988-1990.The Perestroika finally opened doors for Victor to exhibit within Russia at "From Unofficial Art to Perestroika," in Leningrad in 1989 and The Stanislavski Actor's House in Leningrad in 1990. In 1990, Victor received an invitation to come to New York City for a Solo exhibition at Nahamkin Gallery. During this trip, Victor applied for legal residency within the United States and was granted this status for his Extraordinary Abilities in Art. In 1996, Victor's paintings become part of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art at Rutgers University. From this point on, Victor and his family move to rural upstate New York. Here he continues the development of unique techniques for creating 3D casts for oil paintings and paper. Victor's recent works are hand-made paper reliefs, with acrylic used as a color addition to the texture. He also developed a relining technic, which allow him to transfer his reliefs to canvas, and then work with oil paint over the underlying relief. He has also been represented by Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum of The Norton & Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union (1956-1986) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Dianart Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland; Kudam Gallery in Berlin, Germany; Codriorg Pallas Museum , Tallinn, Estonia; Urmala Exhibition Hall, Urmala, Latvia; Regional exhibition in Russia, and solo exhibitions in St. Petersburg, Russia, etc. The specific style category...

Colourful Psychedelic Abstract Landscape Painting of Urban City Scene, using bold bright red and primary colours, by leading British Urban Artist Angela Wakefield. This artwork is f...

City Drive Abstract Expressionist Painting - a rare early work from Leading British Urban Artist, Angela Wakefield. Entitled 'City Drive', this moody and atmospheric artwork is from ...

Cascading Lights by Maria Pierides [2021] original Oil, oil stick, collage, copper leaf, pastel and wax on cradled panel Image size: H:23 cm x W:5 cm Complete Size of Unframed Wor...

Mixed media on poly cotton - Unframed Michael Cusack is an Irish-born, Australia-based abstract painter. His work is painterly, emotive, dramatic, and evocative of the struggle betw...

Mixed media on poly cotton - Unframed Michael Cusack is an Irish-born, Australia-based abstract painter. His work is painterly, emotive, dramatic, and evocative of the struggle betw...

The shape of things (Abstract Painting) Mixed media on poly cotton - Unframed Michael Cusack is an Irish-born, Australia-based abstract painter. His work is painterly, emotive, dra...