Louis Bunce

Large Abstract Modernist Surrealist Painting Pacific Northwest Portland Oregon

1959

African contemporary oil on Panel figurative painting by Zacharia Mbutha, Born 1949, Kenya. A colorful painting by one of East Africa's most famous artists depicting three figures o...

Monumental modernist oil on panel painting by Louis Demott Bunce (1907-1983), from an installation for the Oregon Centennial Exposition, 1959. A rare & important and monumental abstract painting by the celebrated Oregon artist Louis Bunce, the artist was commissioned to paint a mural for the 1959 Oregon Centennial & Trade Fair in Portland, the installation was titled " Gay Garden Way ", it was painted for the exterior of the Horticultural building. The mural having abstract plant abstractions, according to Bunce in his own words it was "the rounded shapes of flowers and the sun", the mural created a major furor from the conservative art public. The painting signed and dated by the artist lower left, the work was sold in the late 1980s through the celebrated Laura Russo Gallery, this painting is featured in Roger Hull's book; "Louis Bunce, Dialogue with Modernism". The painting is in good condition and ready to grace your wall. Louis Bunce attended high school and the Museum Art School before leaving for the Art Students League in New York. He established a New York connection that began when he first attended classes there in 1927 and continued over the years with frequent visits. He became friends with many promising artists, including Jackson Pollock and David Smith. In 1939 he worked for the WPA Easel Project in New York and by the time he returned to Portland he was an established artist on the East Coast. He worked at the WPA art center in Salem as an Instructor and Assistant Director. His work included murals, two of which are in the Post Offices in Grants Pass and St. Johns. Their subjects, mining and orchard farming, are activities of each region. "I have always been visually drawn to the landscape, at first the desert and mountain regions of Wyoming; then the lush and gentle color of the Pacific Northwest and the urban landscape of New York." From 1942-1945 he worked as an illustrator, a tool designer, and in assembly for the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation. After WWII, Bunce joined the faculty of the Museum Art School in Portland, where he had been a student in 1925-1926. He taught there until his retirement in 1972. He excelled at producing screen-prints and introduced this technique to Oregon. While maintaining a national reputation throughout the 1950s and 1960s, some of New York's most prestigious galleries represented him. Theater buffs will remember his murals and portraits for Portland Civic Theater's 1938 production of Pride and Prejudice. In a career that made him one of the most recognized names in Oregon's art history, Bunce had many styles: cubism, expressionism, surrealism and abstractionism. His 1958 mural in the Portland International Airport presents this abstract style: "whirling propellers and shadows of the concourse as seen from above." It was controversial at the time as being too abstract for a public art project. Louis and wife Eda opened a full-time art gallery in Portland in 1949, called the Kharouba. Located first at 1016 SE Morrison, then at SW 11th and Alder, the gallery represented many of the leading artists of the day: Josephine Cameron, William Givler, Clifford Gleason, Jack Hammack, Charles Heaney, Frederick Heidel, George Johanson, Jack McLarty, Rick Norwood, C.S. Price, Arthur Runquist, Jolan Torok, Charles Voorhies...

A important American Impressionist painting by Isabella Howland (1895-1974), "Ocho Rios", Jamaica, 1940. Howland was active in both Boston & New York, this impressionistic painting d...

An important Irish oil painting by George F Campbell (1917-1979), titled "Fishermen Roundstone", circa 1950. The painting depicts two fishermen on their boat with nets and crab pots at the Roundstone harbor Connemara, with a row of whitewashed cottages to the background, the painting is signed "Campbell" lower right. Condition is very good, the painting was professionally cleaned and conserved in 1983, by Lucas Conservation Laboratory. Housed in the original wooden frame. An important painting by one of Ireland's most significant 20th century artists. Provenance; acquired directly from the artist thence by family descent. A C.O.A will be provided with this work. Biography Irish artist George Campbell began painting during the blitz of Belfast while working in an aircraft factory. He painted in Connemara, London and most frequently, Spain, where he lived for twenty five years. A founder member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Campbell was a member of the RHA, and won, among other awards, the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in 1966 and the Oireachtas Prize for Landscape in 1969. Campbell’s paintings are represented in Irish public and private collections. Campbell was born in Arklow, County Wicklow, the son of the respected artist Gretta Bowen (1880-1981) & Matthew Campbell (1866-1925). He attended boarding school in Dublin (Masonic Orphan Boys’ School at Clonskeagh) before moving to Belfast to live with his widowed mother and family. Campbell was working in an aircraft factory at the time of the Belfast Blitz, and began to paint, taking the bomb-damage as his subject. He was one of the founders of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. In the same year along with his brother Arthur (1909-1994) he published a sixteen-page book entitled Ulster in Black and White, that included drawings from the two brothers and their close contemporaries Maurice Wilks...

This oil painting measures 100 x 100 cm 39.4 x 39.4 inches) and is presented in a black frame, giving it a final size of 107 x 107 cm (42.1 x 42.1 inches). The choice of a minimalis...

Artist: Lance Balderson, American Title: Abstract Composition Year: circa 1980 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed l.r. Size: 40.5 x 56 in. (102.87 x 142.24 cm) Frame Size: 41 x 57 inches

Sophie Dumont, a renowned contemporary artist whose works are collected internationally, has once again demonstrated her mastery of subtlety and depth in A Distant Escape. Known for ...

Born in Havana, Cuba, in the late 70s during a well-documented time of religious and political oppression, abstract expressionist artist Mirtha Moreno, immigrated to the United State...