Kikuo Saito

"Orange Tent" Kikuo Saito, Color Field Abstract Expressionism, Japanese-American

1987

Gene Hedge Untitled, circa 1970 Acrylic on canvas 29 x 20 3/4 inches (P097) Gene Hedge was born (1928) and raised in rural Indiana. After military service, he briefly attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. There he encountered the writing of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and the following year (1949) went to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He received a B.S. degree in Visual Design from the Institute of Design (1953), and he also took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago and began working in collage. During this period, the influence of Eugene Dana...

Larry Zox Lexington, 1973 Acrylic on canvas 61 x 49 inches Provenance: Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, Texas Private Collection, Greenwood Village, Colorado Exhibited: New York, Andre Emmerich Gallery, Larry Zox: New Paintings, March 10 - 28, 1973. Houston, Texas, Janie C. Lee Gallery, Larry Zox, February - April, 1974. A painter who played an essential role in the Color Field discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, Larry Zox is best known for his intensely and brilliantly colored geometric abstractions, which question and violate symmetry. Zox stated in 1965: “Being contrary is the only way I can get at anything.” To Zox, this position was not necessarily arbitrary, but instead meant “responding to something in an examination of it [such as] using a mechanical format with X number of possibilities." What he sought was to “get at the specific character and quality of each painting in and for itself,” as James Monte stated in his introductory essay in the catalogue for Zox’s 1973–74 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Zox also at times used a freer, more intuitive method, while maintaining coloristic autonomy, which became increasingly important to him in his later career. Zox began to receive attention in the 1960s, when he was included in several groundbreaking exhibitions of Color Field and Minimalist art, including Shape and Structure (1965), organized by Henry Geldzahler and Frank Stella for Tibor de Nagy, New York, and Systemic Painting (1966), organized by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim Museum. In 1973–74, the Whitney’s solo exhibition of Zox’s work gave recognition to his significance in the art scene of the preceding decade. In the following year, he was represented in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum, which acquired fourteen of his works. Zox was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He attended the University of Oklahoma and Drake University, and then studied under George Grosz at the Des Moines Art Center. In 1958, Zox moved to New York, joining the downtown art scene. His studio on 20th Street became a gathering place for artists, jazz musicians, bikers, and boxers. He occasionally sparred with visiting fighters. He later established a studio in East Hampton, a former black smithy used previously by Jackson Pollock. Zox’s earliest works were collages consisting of pieces of painted paper stapled onto sheets of plywood. He then produced paintings that were illusions of collages, including both torn- and trued-edged forms, to which he added a wide range of strong hues that created ambiguous surfaces. Next, he omitted the collage aspect of his work and applied flat color areas to create more complete statements of pure color and shape. He then replaced these torn and expressive edges with clean and impersonal lines that would define his work for the next decade. From 1962 to 1965, he produced his Rotation series, at first creating plywood and Plexiglas reliefs, which turned squares into dynamic polygons. He used these shapes in his paintings as well, employing white as a foil between colors to produce negative spaces that suggest that the colored shapes had only been cut out and laid down instead of painted. The New York Times noted in 1964: “The artist is hip, cool, adventurous, not content to stay with the mere exercise of sensibility that one sees in smaller works.” In 1965, he began the Scissors Jack series, in which he arranged opposing triangular shapes with inverted Vs of bare canvas at their centers that threaten to split their compositions apart. In several works from this series, Zox was inspired by ancient Chinese water vessels...

Cool abstract piece with hues of white, black, silver and red. About the artist: Michael has been working as a painter and designer for over 20 years. His work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums throughout the country including The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Austin Museum of Digital Art, The Westmoreland Museum of Art, UICA/Michigan, and The Mattress Factory. His paintings have been featured in Atlantic Homes and Lifestyles, Beaux Arts, Table Magazine, Perlora Contemporary Home Magazine, The Wall Street International Magazine and the cover of Housetrends. His work will also be featured in Design Within Reach’s 2019 Catalog. His clients have included The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Nintendo, IBM, Sony Pictures and Panasonic. His work has been published widely in various publications including TIME, The Wall Street Journal, How Magazine, Graphis, London’s Computer Arts, BIg Magazine, The Book of Probes by Marshall Mcluhan (designed by David Carson), Big Magazine and Speak. His collaboration with José Muniain on the short film installation “Navarro”, which documented his painting process, was a finalist in the D.C. Independent Film Festival. Some recent projects include the main lobby interior collections for Bakery Living and Bakery Living Blue, The Hardy House at Nemacolin Woodlands, large scale works for The PPG Paints Arena and commissioned work for The New York Pro Surf Competition and The Quiksilver Pro France. His work has also featured prominently on the sets of several feature films and television series, including Trouble With The Curve, The Last Witch Hunter...

Magenta Lime, 2023 by Ptolemy Mann. Acrylic, acrylic gouache and liquid watercolour on raw linen. 61.5 x 76 cm. A radiant abstract painting that explores colour as emotion. "Magenta...