Louis Siegriest

'Desert Echoes', Society of Six, Bay Area Abstraction, Whitney, PAFA, SFMoMA

1961

Signed lower left, 'Clausen' for Don Clausen (American, 1930-2020) and dated 1974. A self-proclaimed "sculptor of paint," Donald Clausen used tools of his own invention to create co...

Signed upper right, 'Graham' for Ellwood Graham (American, 1911-2007) and painted circa 1985; additionally signed, verso, and titled, 'View Study'. This early California Modernist was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended the School of Fine Arts at Washington University. By the 1930's, Graham was living in California and working in the Federal Art Project as assistant to Gordon Grant. In this capacity, he designed and painted numerous murals in Federal and state buildings including the U.S. Post Office in Ventura. In 1937, he moved to Monterey and the home studio he built there was where he carried out various commissions, including for Senatorial offices in Washington DC and for John Steinbeck, a close personal friend, whose portrait he painted while the author was writing 'Sea of Cortez' (1940). Graham served in the Navy during World War II and, afterwards, traveled between Monterey, the Caribbean (1952-1953), New Mexico, and Mexico (1954-1955) before becoming a resident of Pebble Beach in 1956. In 2000, he moved and spent his final years in Oregon. Graham exhibited widely and with success including at the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939), Art Institute of Chicago (1947), Corcoran Gallery (1947), Whitney Museum of Art (1951), San Francisco Art Association, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art and the Carmel Art Association. Honored with 68 awards, Graham has received national and international acclaim as an abstract painter and colorist. His work can be found in numerous public collections including the Whitney Museum in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Art Museum, the Oakland Museum, and the Brazilian Embassy in Washington. Concerning his work, Graham said: "I am a creative painter, the grist for the mill can come from anything at all - a love affair, a book, a poem, a conversation, anything. I like profound painting, although I'm not always capable of doing it, I want a painting to breathe; I like to orchestrate color, playing with the various tones to create an amalgam of color." Reference: Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 2, page 1341; Artists in California 1786-1940, Third Edition, Edan Milton Hughes: Crocker Art Museum, Sheridan Books 2002, Vol. 1, page 448; Art & Artists: Carmel – Monterey...

Signed lower left "H. Plas" (French, born 1933) and dated 1971; inscribed verso "Champs de Velden" (Fields of Velden). A substantial Expressionist oil landscape showing a lyrical view of russet and gold fields bathed in evening sunlight outside the Dutch village...

Signed lower left, 'Stoltenberg' for Donald Hugo Stoltenberg (American, 1927-2016) and dated 1957. Titled, verso on original artist's label, 'West Side, New York'. Provenance: Mr. & ...

Sterling Strauser (1907-1995). Dorothy and Jasper, Crystal Street Station, 1970. Oil on masonite panel, 11.5 x 22.25 inches. Signed and dated lower right. Very good condition with no damage or conservation. Unframed. Framing services available. Image depicts the artist's wife, Dorothy Strauser, walking the beloved family cat, Jasper. In the background can be seen the East Stroudsburg Pa Train Depot on Crystal Street. Provenance: Estate of the artist's Granddaughter, Princeton NJ. Often called a romantic expressionist and American intimist, self-taught Pennsylvania artist Sterling Strauser (1907-1995) completed his first oil painting in 1922- inspired by frequent visits to the collection of American folk art at the Everhardt Museum in Scranton. Throughout the following seven decades of his career, Strauser’s artistic pursuit was based on his own intuition and determination to paint what he saw, rather than adhering to the conventional pictorial structures prescribed by prevailing styles at the time. Strauser rejected pretension, believing instead that art should work from life as it was lived. His oeuvre therefore serves as an extremely personal record of his observations and experiences from his lifetime painting in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Beginning early in his career, Strauser took his inspiration from American regionalists and traditional realists in the Ashcan style, as well as European movements such as Fauvism and Cubism, yet he eventually developed his own fluid realism based on subject matter beloved and familiar to him- family and friends, local landscapes and floral still lifes. Known for his distorted pictorial space, exaggerated with vivid color, heavy impasto and an intensity of emotion, Strauser was adept at altering and rearranging the details and aspects of any given form to create a new kind of beauty. "All a painting has to do, or a piece of sculpture, or whatever, is to entertain the critical eye. You have to have a fresh seeing eye… to look at things like a child, as if looking at the world for the first time (seeing) something that somebody else doesn’t see, something you want to identify with… Painting is largely a matter of evaluation. (It) doesn’t matter how much it looks like the subject matter. It just depends on how interesting you have made it so that it pleases the critical eye." STERLING STRAUSER, STERLING STRAUSER: A MODERNIST REVISTED, P. 23 Sterling exhibited his work extensively throughout the country and drew the attention of many notable fellow artists including Milton Avery, Louise Nevelson, David Burliuk, Chaim Gross and Red Grooms. Sterling was also extremely influential within the arts community of Pennsylvania through his discovery and promotion of self-taught American Folk artists such as Justin McCarthy, Jack Savitsky, Joseph Gatto...

A lush, jungle setting bursting with plant life is depicted in panoramic view, in this horizontal botanical landscape by Bay Area artist Michael Pauker (American, b. 1957), c.1990s....

The Avenue of Trees French Expressionist School, signed front and back Dated 1974 oil on canvas, framed framed: 37 x 44 inches canvas: 32 x 39 inches private collection, France the p...

The House amongst Trees French Expressionist painter, mid 20th century oil painting on canvas, unframed painting: 10 x 13 inches provenance: private collection, France condition: o...