Joe Doyle

Untitled 564

1988

This artwork "Untitled" is an oil painting on canvas by noted American artist Ruth Wall, 1917-2009. It is signed in the back by the artist. The canvas size is 10.15 x 20 inches, framed size is 13.85 x 22.75. It is custom framed in a wooden gold frame. The painting is in excellent condition, the frame has some scratches and will be replaced if buyer wish, by a similar (not exactly the same) gold frame when is sold. It will be done at no extra cost. This will bring the over all condition to excellent. About the artist: Ruth A. Wall was born in Wyoming on September 10, 1917 but moved to a homestead on an Indian reservation in Uintah, Utah in 1919. After graduating from high school at age 16 she left home to attend college, graduating at age 20 and began teaching high school at age 21. She moved to Los Angeles where she became an Army materials inspector during WWII. She moved to Northern California and became a pilot, but entered the service as a WAC. Here she trained as a physical therapist and became an officer. She remained in the service until 1949. In 1950 she entered the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, studying there until leaving for Paris in 1952 where she moved into the Academie Frochot. Returning to the CSFA in 1955 she worked as an artist until she had to take a job to make a living in 1957. Most of her work in printmaking was done in 1952, before leaving for Paris. They are, for the most part, gestural, Abstract Expressionist lithographs, done on the press at the CSFA at night after everyone had gone home. Her teachers were James Budd Dixon, Robert McChesney and, after 1955, Nate Oliviera and fellow students included James Kelly...

This artwork titled "Abstract I" c.1990, is an original color screenprint by noted American Artist Jeffrey Long, b.1948. It is hand signed and numbered 30/150 in pencil by the artist...

According to the artist, "everything in life inspires me, not quite with direct interpretation, but as I see and experience faces, words, gestures, colors and shapes – all of it – I ...

Roland Ayers (1932-2017). Untitled, 1983. Ink on paper, measures 17 x 23 inches. Unframed and unmounted. Signed and dated lower left. Ayers holds the distinction of having participated in the first important survey of African-Americans, Contemporary Black Artists in America, a 1971 show at The Whitney. Biography: Artist and art educator, Roland Ayers was born on July 2, 1932, the only child of Alice and Lorenzo Ayers, and grew up in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Ayers served in the US Army (stationed in Germany) before studying at the Philadelphia College of Art (currently University of the Arts). He graduated with a BFA in Art Education, 1954. He traveled Europe 1966-67, spending time in Amsterdam and Greece in particular. During this period, he drifted away from painting to focus on linear figurative drawings of a surreal nature. His return home inaugurated the artist’s most prolific and inspired period (1968-1975). Shorty before his second major trip abroad in 1971-72 to West Africa, Ayers began to focus on African themes, and African American figures populated his work almost exclusively. In spite of Ayers’ travel and exploration of the world, he gravitated back to his beloved Germantown, a place he endowed with mythological qualities in his work and literature. His auto-biographical writing focuses on the importance of place during his childhood. Ayers’ journals meticulously document the ethnic and cultural make-up of Germantown, and tell a compelling story of class marginalization that brought together poor families despite racial differences. The distinctive look and design of Germantown inform Ayers’ visual vocabulary. It is a setting with distinctive Gothic Revival architecture and haunting natural beauty. These characteristics are translated and recur in the artist’s imagery. During his childhood, one of the only books in the Ayers household was an illustrated Bible. The images within had a profound effect on the themes and subjects that would appear in his adult work. Figures in an Ayers’ drawing often seem trapped in a narrative of loss and redemption. Powerful women loom large in the drawings: they suggest the female role models his journals record in early life. The drawings can sometimes convey a strong sense of conflict, and at other times, harmony. Nature and architecture seem to have an antagonistic relationship that is, ironically, symbiotic. A critical turning point in the artist’s career came in 1971 when he was included in the extremely controversial Whitney Museum show, Contemporary Black Artists in America. The exhibition gave Ayers an international audience and served as a calling card for introductions he would soon make in Europe. Ayers is a particularly compelling figure in a period when black artists struggled with the idea of authenticity. A questioned often asked was “Is your work too black, or not black enough?” Abstractionists were considered by some peers to be sell-outs, frauds or worse. Figurative* work was accused of being either sentimental or politically radical depending on the critical source. Ayers made the choice early on to be a figurative artist, but considered his work devoid of political content. Organizations such as Chicago’ s Afri-Cobra in the late 1960‘s asserted that the only true black art of any relevance must depict the black man and woman...