Masonite Abstract Paintings

Closed Doors, 1957, polymer tempera on Masonite, signed lower right, 20 x 40 inches, inscribed verso “Zerbe Closed Doors June 1957,” label verso reads: “Artist Karl Zerbe / No. T / T...

James Earl Ray (1928-1998). Landscape with Orange Sky. ca. 1975. Oil on masonite panel measures 6.5 x 8.5 inches, 10.5 x 12.5 inches framed. Signed lowe...

Abstract Landscape Miriam Bromberg Date: circa 1960 Oil on Masonite Size: 7.5 x 9.25 in. (19.05 x 23.5 cm) Frame Size: 13 x 15 inches

Signed lower right, 'K. Sanzenbach' for Keith Sanzenbach (American, 1931-1964) and dated 1956. Additionally signed, verso, and with the artist's Lagunitas, California address. The ...

Abstracted seascape of three boats near the shore with broad, painterly strokes of blue, turquoise, and neutrals by Robert Canete (American, b. 1948). Signed lower right. Image: 16"H...

Sylvia Rutkoff (1919-2011) Sr5-1 c.1960s “Crossed Arms” Acrylic on Masonite 36x42 period frame Unsigned Collection acquired from family estate

An abstract collage on wood by Kenneth Morrow Martin, American (1911-1983). Exhibited: 1st Knoxville Art Center National Exhibtion, 1961 White Landscape by Keith Morrow Martin...

Large early oil painting by noted Mexican abstract artist Leonardo Nierman (1932 - ), signed lower right. Systema Solar Leonardo Nierman, Me...

Mid Century Modern, American Abstract Expressionist Painting on Masonite. This wonderful work in hues of blue comes house in a contemporary natural wood frame presentation.. The ar...

Enchanted Ship Leonardo Nierman, Mexican (1932–2023) Date: circa 1970 Oil on Masonite, signed lower left and titled on verso Size: 23 x 30.75 in. (58.42 x 78.11 cm) Frame Size: 31 x ...

Large Scale Mid 20th Century Acrylic Painting by Vanguard Studios Signed Van Gaard Classic 1950s to 1960s acrylic painting of a guitar against a colorful ab...

Tropical Fantasy Floral - Still Life Flowers Painting by Marc Zimmerman Oil on board Marc Zimmerman creates playful paintings, whether deep mysterious jungle or delightfully whimsic...

Bertha G. Davis (1911-1997) Untitled, ca. 1960's Oil on cradled masonite panel. 16 x 20 inches; 24 x 28 inches framed. Signed lower left. Artist estate stamp on verso. Vintage custom wormy chestnut frame. A painter of cityscapes, landscapes, and abstracts in Texas, Bertha G Davis was primarily a self-taught artist whose style was influenced by her early life experiences in pre-World War II Lithuania and later Mexico. Her style is expressionistic*, relying on color to denote her profound feelings. She works primarily in watercolor and acrylic with some mixed media*. She is the daughter of Abraham and Dvora Germaize of Vilna, Lithuania and grew up in Jewish ghettos in Vilna, Alita, and Kovno. Davis was influenced by her father who was a decorative wood-worker and carpenter in Lithuania. The family of five daughters and a son escaped to Mexico City in the late 1920’s because of Jewish oppression. The images and emotions she experienced had no outlet. She was known as a beauty, and at age 17 was named Jewish Miss Mexico, barely able to speak Spanish having just emigrated from Eastern Europe. Irving Davis, a merchant from Texas who had also come from Eastern Europe via Cuba, saw her at this event where she was crowned Jewish Miss Mexico, and three days later asked for her hand in marriage. They moved to a small town in Texas, raising a family. Her daughter, Sylvia, was born when Davis was 20 and they were inseparable. As Sylvia became an actress, painter, and sculptor, Davis was amazed at the capacity for creativity. Davis didn’t begin her own artistic journey until she was 47, when her daughter Sylvia Caplan encouraged her to try. She was inspired by this daughter who gave her a drugstore palette of watercolors, paper and brushes and told her to “just try.” Davis did not put down her palette and brushes until her death in 1997. Bertha G Davis was primarily self-taught but maintained a style oriented toward color and texture that reflected her strong feelings. Most of her early work was done while she lived in McAllen, Texas where she was known for her contribution to art and showed her work and the work of other artists at the Bertha Davis Gallery. She studied with Stewart Van Orden, at Pan American College in 1960-61; and was a student at the Art Institute San Miguel Allende, Mexico, 1965. She was also a student of Harold Phenix...

Colorful abstract oil painting on canvas by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unframed. Titled "An Archbis...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

Striking mid century abstract expressionist painting by Leslie Luverne Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Oil on masonite painting titled "Lightnings Infinte Art of Living...

Impressive early American impressionist landscape painting by Will S. Taylor (Born 1882). Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Image size, 12 by 13 inches.

Small but mighty. A moment caught, an explosion of energy, of color. And such a departure for California artist Heinie Hartwig (b. 1937), who is known primarily for his Western subje...

A dymanic mid century abstract expressionist painiting with geometric shapes in cool tones and two figures by Leslie Luverne Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Oil on masonite. Titled "...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Cubist Portrait), 1945, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower middle, 20 x 16 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, perhaps exhibited at Murry's solo exhibition at the Los Angeles's Screen Cartoonists' Gallery, July , 1945, presented in its original frame Jerre Murry was a California modernist painter. Born in Columbia, Missouri, Murry studied at the Detroit Academy of Art and worked as an artist for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. Murry traveled to the Bahamas, where he was inspired to paint modernist scenes of island life and people. By the early 1930s, Murry had relocated to Los Angeles, where he caught the attention of Synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald Wright, State Supervisor for the Federal Art Project (FAP) in Southern California. MacDonald Wright enrolled Murry into the FAP. Murry’s Gauguin-influenced painting Sun Image was exhibited together with other FAP artists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1936, and Murry was also included in the FAP exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1937. Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, the Chamber of Commerce Gallery in Santa Barbara, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art also showed Murry’s work during the 1930s. Murry created a murals for Los Angeles Water & Power Company, the Boise, Idaho Post Office, and Glendale Junior College. In 1939, Murry's work was exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition and the New York World's Fair. He also was included in the All California Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of art that same year. He went on to exhibit in Los Angeles at the Foundation of Western Art's Trends in Southern California Art shows in 1940 and 1941, at Raymond and Raymond Gallery in Hollywood and USC’s Elizabeth Holmes...

A magnificent 1931 Art Deco painting by master artist John Storrs. Artwork size: 18" x 12". Framed Size: 21 1/4" x 21 3/4". In a handsome, dark fram...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

A beautiful Peter Keil original painting. Keil's signature style is shown in these Picasso inspired portraits. These portraits are characteristic of Keil's work in the 1980s when the...

Mid Century Modern, American Abstract Expressionist Painting on artist board. This wonderful work combines delicate shades of pink and blue and comes house in a contemporary natural...

This modern abstract painting by Peter Keil is on a smooth masonite board with a painted Tiffany Blue background, black abstract portrait with many ...

Fredric Karoly (1898-1987). Etude III, 1950. Oil on masonite panel measures 18 x 24 inches. Unframed. Signed, titled, dated on reverse. Good condition with minor paint loss at edges. Biography: An abstract painter, Karoly was born in Hungary and studied painting in Paris, architectural eingineering in Berlin, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1926. He began a successful career as a fashion and fabric designer. In 1948 he was working as a fashion director for Simplicity Patters, when he had a solo exhibition of of his oil paintings, wire montages, dry-pen drawings and abstract photography. Solo Exhibitions: Hugo Gallery (Alexandre Iolas) New York 1948; Gallery Mai. Paris 1949; New Gallery (Eugene Thaw) New York 1950; Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo, Brazil 1951; Miami Museum of Modern Art, Miami, Florida 1959; Loft Gallery, New York City, 1966.Group Exhibitions: Hugo Gallery, New York 1947; Salon des Realities Nouvelles, Paris 1949-1953; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Annual) 1951-1953, 1963; Biennale of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1951; International Independent Exhibition, Tokyo, 1951; Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1959; The Butler Institute of Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1960; Stuttman Gallery, New York, 1960; The Art Institute of Chicago (Annual), 1960; International Watercolor Exhibition, Brookyln Museum, 1961; Westchester Art Museum, White Plains, NY, 1963; Whitney Museum, Annual, NY 1963; Cleveland Art Festival, Park Synagogue, Cleveland, 1963; Whitney Museum, Sculpture Annual, NY, 1964.Works in Institutional Collections: Museu de Arte, San Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; New York University, New York; Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; Finch College, NY; Barnard College, NY; Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL. Awards: National Council Arts Awards, 1968. Frederic Karoly died on December 15, 1987 at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Manhattan, where he had made his home for many years. Fredric Karoly was born in Budapest in 1893. According to Karoly’s own vitae, his exhibition history began in New York in 1947, when at the age of 54 he took part in a four-person group show at Hugo Gallery. His involvement with visual art however was apparently life long. In a brief introduction to his solo show at Galerie Mai in Paris in June of 1949, Jen Luc de Rudder, reports that Karoly began painting at the age of 12 in Budapest. After several years of studying, then working in London, Paris and Berlin, Karoly emigrated to the United States in 1925 or 1926 (he probably first came to the US on a work visa in 1925). In New York, Karoly worked in women’s fashion as a designer. In 1948 Karoly worked in a manner than was clearly influenced by the work of such European surrealists as Max Ernst, creating spiked automatic bi-chromatic paintings. His style progressed into a progressively more biomorphic vein, similar to explorations by Theodore Stamos, Daphnis, Milton Avery and Mark Rothko around the same period. He was supported with patronage during this period by Mrs. Mimi Baliff, who apparently supported the “Industrial Design Workshop” that she helped open to feature Karoly’s designs in 1948. By the early 1950’s (1951) Karoly started experimenting with the drip and splatter process as well. Drip paintings dominated his process until the late 50’s-early 60’s, when linear compositional elements began to reemerge. By the late 50’s multi-layered drip grid motifs asserted a masque of spatial organization over looser washed fields and splatters of paint that Karoly worked off of. This development was consistent with concurrent explorations into the grid by artist Agnes Martin and others. By the mid-50’s Karoly’s style began another transition into a more surface concerned “Color Field” style of painting. There are elements still reminding one of Abstract Expressionist concerns as such painters as Clifford Still. But the works that began to emerge from Karoly’s studio in 1958 presaged the Morris Lewis fan motifs and Friedl Dzubas’s epic and romantic color spewing expanses of canvas. In 1959 Karoly began experiments using washes of turpentine diluted oil paint directly onto raw linen, and all of these subsequently suffered the consequences of oil oxidation and acidity upon the surfaces. However, many of Karoly’s washes in color field happily occurred on lightly prepared primed canvas surfaces as well. By 1960 Karoly began reintroducing imagistic references to his visual content. There were also various references to Japanese and Zen influences. He experimented with a variety of processes that included mixed media and marbleized surfaces achieved by the intermixture of oil and water mediums. A calligraphic element also enter Karoly’s work in the early 60’s. Then in 1961 glued and assembled objects begin to show up in Karoly’s work in earnest. The influence of early POP artists, particularly Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, become apparent. From 1961-63, a series of the assemblage works transition from canvas to the sculptural to pieces obviously intended for full scale installation. Many of these pieces were among the most fragile of his works primarily due to their reliance upon the of gluing of objects such as plastic or paper cups on flexible surfaces of stretched linen or canvas. In the mid-60’s Karoly apparently produced a number of photo-silk screened series of Picasso, De Kooning and other significant artists of his generation. These were executed in a style somewhere between Rauschenberg’s and Roy Lichtenstein’s, primarily because of their reliance upon half tones and Ben-Day dot effects. Then Karoly began a series of paintings conflating his drip and grid styles with super imposed and painted over string. In the late 60’s Karoly embarked upon a series of multi-paneled stretched linen constructions often with slits and fiber optic back-lit elements that were prescient of the work of Dan Flavin and others. It was this body of work that was shown at Hofstra University’s Emily Lowe Gallery, and it was these works that suffered perhaps the most irreparable damage from a steam/water infiltration in a space where they were being stored. The late professional start that Karoly had into the art world was balanced by his long life span and early immersion into the design issues of modernism as it emerged in turn of the century Europe and later evolved in America. He was clearly an artist who subscribed to the ethos of the new in abstraction and was obviously impressionable and in some instances prescient with regard to various trends in abstraction. Several noteworthy and influential collectors and institutions during his 40 years of professional engagement acquired his work. The Whitney Museum of American Art had and may still own a large Karoly canvas from 1960, but this is doubtful as the artist failed to list it on the vitae he filed with MoMA in 1965. His work was recognized and honored by the Whitney with its inclusion in four of their annual survey shows (1951,1953, 1963 and 1964). The artist’s surrealist influenced paintings from 1948-1950 were the focus of a solo exhibition held of his work by the Museo de Art in Sao Paulo and eight years later a ten year survey of his work was the focus of a solo show at the Miami Museum of Modern art. The Sao Paulo Museum in Brazil, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina each acquired Karoly paintings for their collections in the 1950’s. One of Karoly’s surrealist pieces was apparently purchased by Christian Zervos, Picasso’s designated chronicler, who apparently also wrote a piece on Karoly in Cahiers D’Art in 1949. A 60’s piece of Karoly art that is in the New York University’s permanent collection is included in the MoMA Library’s catalog...

Large Geometric Abstract Oil Painting on Masonite No visible signature 36 x 48 unframed, 37.5 x 49.5 framed

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...

Coral Bouquet - Abstracted Underwater Scene in Acrylic on Masonite High contrast abstract composition by an unknown artist (20th Century). Vibrant scene composed of abstract shapes ...

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...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

Robertino Fatica was born in 1948 in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1970 he completed a three-year program at the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland. Following that, Fatica served in the U.S. Ar...

Signed lower right, 'Savo' for Joan Savo (American, 1918-1992) and dated 1960. Additionally signed, verso, on old label and titled, 'City Lights'. Accompanie...

Vivid and evocative feminist abstract expressionist figurative painting of woman and the many facets of her life, represented by multiple female figures engaged in various activities throughout the chaotic and colorful abstract expressionist canvas, by Audrey E. Gabrielson (American, 1932-2018), 1976. Verso has an abstract portrait with signature. Unframed. Image size: 29.75"H x 31.50"W Audrey Gabrielson was an artist, poetess, sculptor, whom lived in San Francisco. She was born in Canada in 1932 and drew, colored, modeled in clay when very young. She studied at Reed College, Portland, studying with famous West Coast artist, Louis Bunce. in San Francisco she painted with artists Cucaro, Alexander E. Anderson, and Raymond Howell. She had shown in North Beach, Modesto, Gualuala Hotel, Sausalito, Abbey Party Rents (S.F.) and many more. She had ongoing exhibits at Alberta Art, Red Deer and Uglies, Lacombe. Her art was collected by national and international collectors such as authors C.Y. Lee (“Flower Drum Song”), Alfred Coppel (“34 East”); musical promoter, Ilka Pardinas, FLY, Los Angeles. Additionally, she worked in bronze, studying under S.F. sculptor C.B. Johnson. Her art was influenced and inspired by German Expressionists, Van Gogh, Lautrec, Picasso, Klimpt, Schiele, Tamayo, Conners, Park – and many more. Obituary: Born in Alberta, Canada, Audrey passed away at her home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood, surrounded by loved ones. Gabrielson was an artist, poet, sculptor, photographer, muse and an integral part of the San Francisco art scene of the late 1950s to late 1970s. She was a friend and contemporary of artists such as Benny Bufano...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

Artist: Ian Hornak (1944-2002) Title: Waiting for the Barbarians Year: 1985 Medium: Acrylic on double layered Masonite Size: 37 x 31 inches Condition: Good Provenance: Estate of Ian ...

A wonderful mid-century interpretation of prehistoric, Paleolithic cave paintings; done in reddish earth tones and rich in visual texture by Sausalito, California artist Nan Street F...

Jean Krillé’s paintings are known for their expressive use of color and dynamic, abstract forms, blending realism with abstraction in his depictions of nature. His landscapes often f...

Fredric Karoly (1898-1987). Etude, 1950. Oil on masonite panel measures 18 x 24 inches. Unframed. Signed, titled, dated on reverse. Good condition with minor paint loss at edges. Biography: An abstract painter, Karoly was born in Hungary and studied painting in Paris, architectural eingineering in Berlin, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1926. He began a successful career as a fashion and fabric designer. In 1948 he was working as a fashion director for Simplicity Patters, when he had a solo exhibition of of his oil paintings, wire montages, dry-pen drawings and abstract photography. Solo Exhibitions: Hugo Gallery (Alexandre Iolas) New York 1948; Gallery Mai. Paris 1949; New Gallery (Eugene Thaw) New York 1950; Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo, Brazil 1951; Miami Museum of Modern Art, Miami, Florida 1959; Loft Gallery, New York City, 1966.Group Exhibitions: Hugo Gallery, New York 1947; Salon des Realities Nouvelles, Paris 1949-1953; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Annual) 1951-1953, 1963; Biennale of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1951; International Independent Exhibition, Tokyo, 1951; Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1959; The Butler Institute of Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1960; Stuttman Gallery, New York, 1960; The Art Institute of Chicago (Annual), 1960; International Watercolor Exhibition, Brookyln Museum, 1961; Westchester Art Museum, White Plains, NY, 1963; Whitney Museum, Annual, NY 1963; Cleveland Art Festival, Park Synagogue, Cleveland, 1963; Whitney Museum, Sculpture Annual, NY, 1964.Works in Institutional Collections: Museu de Arte, San Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; New York University, New York; Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; Finch College, NY; Barnard College, NY; Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL. Awards: National Council Arts Awards, 1968. Frederic Karoly died on December 15, 1987 at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Manhattan, where he had made his home for many years. Fredric Karoly was born in Budapest in 1893. According to Karoly’s own vitae, his exhibition history began in New York in 1947, when at the age of 54 he took part in a four-person group show at Hugo Gallery. His involvement with visual art however was apparently life long. In a brief introduction to his solo show at Galerie Mai in Paris in June of 1949, Jen Luc de Rudder, reports that Karoly began painting at the age of 12 in Budapest. After several years of studying, then working in London, Paris and Berlin, Karoly emigrated to the United States in 1925 or 1926 (he probably first came to the US on a work visa in 1925). In New York, Karoly worked in women’s fashion as a designer. In 1948 Karoly worked in a manner than was clearly influenced by the work of such European surrealists as Max Ernst, creating spiked automatic bi-chromatic paintings. His style progressed into a progressively more biomorphic vein, similar to explorations by Theodore Stamos, Daphnis, Milton Avery and Mark Rothko around the same period. He was supported with patronage during this period by Mrs. Mimi Baliff, who apparently supported the “Industrial Design Workshop” that she helped open to feature Karoly’s designs in 1948. By the early 1950’s (1951) Karoly started experimenting with the drip and splatter process as well. Drip paintings dominated his process until the late 50’s-early 60’s, when linear compositional elements began to reemerge. By the late 50’s multi-layered drip grid motifs asserted a masque of spatial organization over looser washed fields and splatters of paint that Karoly worked off of. This development was consistent with concurrent explorations into the grid by artist Agnes Martin and others. By the mid-50’s Karoly’s style began another transition into a more surface concerned “Color Field” style of painting. There are elements still reminding one of Abstract Expressionist concerns as such painters as Clifford Still. But the works that began to emerge from Karoly’s studio in 1958 presaged the Morris Lewis fan motifs and Friedl Dzubas’s epic and romantic color spewing expanses of canvas. In 1959 Karoly began experiments using washes of turpentine diluted oil paint directly onto raw linen, and all of these subsequently suffered the consequences of oil oxidation and acidity upon the surfaces. However, many of Karoly’s washes in color field happily occurred on lightly prepared primed canvas surfaces as well. By 1960 Karoly began reintroducing imagistic references to his visual content. There were also various references to Japanese and Zen influences. He experimented with a variety of processes that included mixed media and marbleized surfaces achieved by the intermixture of oil and water mediums. A calligraphic element also enter Karoly’s work in the early 60’s. Then in 1961 glued and assembled objects begin to show up in Karoly’s work in earnest. The influence of early POP artists, particularly Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, become apparent. From 1961-63, a series of the assemblage works transition from canvas to the sculptural to pieces obviously intended for full scale installation. Many of these pieces were among the most fragile of his works primarily due to their reliance upon the of gluing of objects such as plastic or paper cups on flexible surfaces of stretched linen or canvas. In the mid-60’s Karoly apparently produced a number of photo-silk screened series of Picasso, De Kooning and other significant artists of his generation. These were executed in a style somewhere between Rauschenberg’s and Roy Lichtenstein’s, primarily because of their reliance upon half tones and Ben-Day dot effects. Then Karoly began a series of paintings conflating his drip and grid styles with super imposed and painted over string. In the late 60’s Karoly embarked upon a series of multi-paneled stretched linen constructions often with slits and fiber optic back-lit elements that were prescient of the work of Dan Flavin and others. It was this body of work that was shown at Hofstra University’s Emily Lowe Gallery, and it was these works that suffered perhaps the most irreparable damage from a steam/water infiltration in a space where they were being stored. The late professional start that Karoly had into the art world was balanced by his long life span and early immersion into the design issues of modernism as it emerged in turn of the century Europe and later evolved in America. He was clearly an artist who subscribed to the ethos of the new in abstraction and was obviously impressionable and in some instances prescient with regard to various trends in abstraction. Several noteworthy and influential collectors and institutions during his 40 years of professional engagement acquired his work. The Whitney Museum of American Art had and may still own a large Karoly canvas from 1960, but this is doubtful as the artist failed to list it on the vitae he filed with MoMA in 1965. His work was recognized and honored by the Whitney with its inclusion in four of their annual survey shows (1951,1953, 1963 and 1964). The artist’s surrealist influenced paintings from 1948-1950 were the focus of a solo exhibition held of his work by the Museo de Art in Sao Paulo and eight years later a ten year survey of his work was the focus of a solo show at the Miami Museum of Modern art. The Sao Paulo Museum in Brazil, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina each acquired Karoly paintings for their collections in the 1950’s. One of Karoly’s surrealist pieces was apparently purchased by Christian Zervos, Picasso’s designated chronicler, who apparently also wrote a piece on Karoly in Cahiers D’Art in 1949. A 60’s piece of Karoly art that is in the New York University’s permanent collection is included in the MoMA Library’s catalog...

Acrylic on masonite. This is a pivotal work in deep and radiant cobalt blue from 1950. It dipicts calligraphic and hieroglyph structures over a grid and pyramidal base by the first generation abstract expressionist. Provenance: Skinner: November 13, 1992 [Lot 00219}, The entry in the Skinner catalog indicates that the painting came directly from the artist to the family of the consignor to Skinner. Kaminsky Auctions. There is an unbroken paper trail that traces the ownership of the painting from the current owner, through two auction houses to the artist. Perfect unbroken provenance. Pousette-Dart was among the most inventive of the Abstract Expressionist generation, His uncanny talent was to expand the nature of abstraction and still make each mark each element very much his own; a reflection of what he called   "the concealed power of the spirit," he said, “not of the brute physical form."   His was not aiming for a singular, realized aesthetic formula but to expand the possibilities of painting; the transcendental in painting. Typical of such invention and exploration is this  painting  Untitled 1950 when the artist was only 34 years old and represented by one of the champions of the new American painting, Betty Parsons.  
A banner year for Pousette-Dart, the Museum of Modern Art acquired their first painting by the Minnesota born artist.  He worked on easel size works such as this painting an oil on masonite. At the same time Pousette-Dart was also working on larger scale works such as Path of the Hero, running over ten feet in length now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Both contain fields of color articulated by a highly sophisticated white hieroglyphic vocabulary. Rather than demonstrate an expressionist sensibility, Pousette-Dart harnesses his more cerebral ideas transforming thick areas of paint into a more refined composition of geometric forms akin to the pattern and forms of say a stained glass window. In a way he is looking back at Fugue, 1940 a black and white composition which makes use of a similar format of painting albeit smaller. Color and form are minimal, but what Pousette-Dart has maximized is the rhythmic and syncopated character of painting casting his ideas into purely symbolic terms that one might link to the pictograms of Adolph Gottlieb. Nonetheless, nature is always at the core of Pousette-Dart’s thinking and dreaming. Here he has transformed the local Ramapo Mountains—where he will eventually move with his family to live and work— into a complex series of articulated fragments linked by style, scale and color.  The painting’s imagery built on two large triangles and reduced to just two colors, cobalt blue and white all outlined in black.  Pousette-Dart symbols stacked in horizontal and vertical rows:  blue is ground, white is language, symbolic of light, consciousness and awareness . The painting maintains a mystical character images compounded that formulate a secret code and linked to the series of white paintings Pousette-Dart authored in the first half of the 1950s. Get up close to the picture and you discover images within images a kind of picture puzzle...

Colorful abstract painting with geometric details in bright hues of blue, red, green, and yellow, against a black background "Instead", painted by Anne Francey in 2017 Mixed media on Masonite 10 x 10 x 2 inches, sides reveal raw wood Excellent condition, signed verso Ready to hang Anne Francey has been working with subject matter inspired by nature for most of her artistic career. Since the pandemic, this focus has become ever more apparent as her new acrylic paintings on paper demonstrate her intuitive process of reinterpreting literal subjects like leaves, flowers, birds, or bugs into vibrant worlds of layered color. She begins by drawing from life but then allows fluctuating colors, traces of the hand, and evidence of the physical medium to be introduced as the composition evolves and finds its final imprint on the surface. The spontaneity of her process welcomes the unknown, she explains: “The things that moved me first…might have become by now just a faint whispering. But I know that a story is being told, even if I don’t understand yet all the words.” About the artist: Anne Francey was born in 1956 in Grandson, Switzerland. She attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (ECBA) from 1976 to 1981, where she received a diploma of Fine Arts in painting. In 1981, she moved to New York where she attended the School of Visual Arts and the graduate program of Fine Arts at Hunter College. She graduated in 1987 with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). EDUCATION 1983-1987 Hunter College: Master of Fine Arts, New York EXHIBITIONS (Most recent) 2021 Le Comptoir des Motifs, Artefactory, Geneva, Switzerland, fabric design, group show 2018 Eric Laffer Gallery, Upstate Invitational, 3 person show, Schuylerville, NY The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Configurations, one person show, Troy, NY Carrie Haddad gallery, Ebb and Flow, Hudson, NY Saratoga Arts, Then and Now, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 2017 Byrdcliffe Kleinert/James Center, The Ritual of Construction, group show, Woodstock, NY Carrie Haddad gallery, Summer, group show Thompson Giroux gallery, En Masse, group show Eric Laffer gallery, Winter Show, Schuylerville, NY 2016 Saratoga Arts, 30th Anniversary Invitational, Saratoga Springs, NY Carrie Haddad Gallery, Summer Color, Hudson, NY Laffer Gallery, 5th Annual Juried Group Show, Schuylerville, NY 2015 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Paper, group show, Hudson, NY 2014 Luminarté, Contemporary Islamic Art, group show, Dallas, TX Spring Street Gallery, Where are you from? 3 persons show, Saratoga Spgs, NY Albany Institute of History and Art, Mohawk Hudson Regional, group show NY Albany International Airport, Natural Gestures, 3 persons show Albany, NY Laffer Gallery, Winter show, Schuylerville, NY COMMUNITY MURALS, GRANTS, RESIDENCIES, SYMPOSIUMS, 2021 Community Mural United Nations International school, NY “The Year that Zoomed by” 2020 Fulbright U.S. Scholar award 2020-2021 (travel postponed to 2021-2022) 2019 1001 Hands (“1001 Mains”) Concept, design and direction of a 150 sqft community ceramic mural with 600 participants, Ibn Rachiq Art Center,Tunis, Tunisia. Funded through the US Embassy and the Swiss Embassy in Tunis. Colors of the City, Wall Ceramic and Architecture in Tunis, International symposium, Tunis/Tunisia 1997- 2018 Artist in residence at various schools for the creation of community murals 2018 Bir-el Bey...

Mid Century Modern, American Abstract Expressionist Painting on Masonite. This wonderful work in exciting colors is housed in a contemporary white wood frame presentation.. The art...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on board. Signed and dated lower right and verso, titled verso. 36.25 x 48 in. 40.5 x 52.25 in. (framed) Framed in contemporary silver, tiered floater frame. Dennis Eugene Norman Burton was a Canadian modernist who was born in Lethbridge, Ontario. He attended the Ontario College of Art from 1952 to 1956, and worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a graphic designer until 1960. Inspired by a 1955 exhibition of the “Painters Eleven” at Toronto’s Hart House, as well as American Abstract Expressionist artists such as Robert Motherwell, Jack Tworkov, and Willem de Kooning, Burton shifted his focus toward abstraction in the mid-1950s. Burton showed with the famed Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the youngest members on the gallery’s roster. A talented musician, he also played saxophone in the Artist’s Jazz Band in Toronto - a pioneering Canadian free-jazz group...

Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Bibliography Art in America, April 1951, p.78 About this artists: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...

Ben Wilson Byzantium, 1975 Oil on Masonite painting Hand signed reverse, Titled, "Byzantium", dated 1975 by the artist and also with estate stamp - in addition to Ben Wilson's hand s...

This 20" x 23" oil on masonite painting by Georgian artist Erekle Chinchilakashvili depicts two blue trees near a brown pathway leading to the...

Small and colorful expressionist portrait of a clown by Marjorie Blake (American, 1920-1994). Signed "M. Blake" in the lower right corner. Dated "1969" ...

"Room Interior" is an original acrylic painting on masonite by David Barnett. The artist used bright, non-mimetic colors to create an abstracted interior scene. Artist signed piece o...

Expressive and raw large-scale modernist portrait of the timeless film actress Alida Valli (Italian, 1921-2006) by contemporary Barcelona artist Mariona Mi...

Sylvia Rutkoff (1919-2011) 26-1 "The Schoolgirl" c.1950s Oil paint, sand on Masonite 36x48 wood period frame Unsigned Collection acquired from family estate Sylvia Weinreb Rutkoff (...

Mid Century Modern, American Abstract Expressionist Painting on artist board. This lively action painting has wonderful interjections of color within the predominantly black and whi...

Bold abstract painting with pink, yellow, black, brown and white forms by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the es...

Boathouse at Night, Modernist Two Toned Color-field Abstracted Seascape Nocturnal seascape by Vasil (Victor) Papkov (20th Century). At the top of the piece, the moon is obscured beh...

A Transendental Abstraction by famed Chicago Modernist, William S. Schwartz titled "Impressions of the West #7". Anecdotally, Schwartz's notable "Impressions of the West" series wer...

Katherine Westphal's oil on board painting titled 'Abstract Landscape' embodies the stylistic qualities of abstract painting. Using a diverse color palette of orange, red, yellow, bl...

"Ring" Textured Abstract Geometric Composition in Oil on Cradled Masonite Panel Abstract composition by California artist Devon Brockopp-Hammer (American, b. 1986). This piece is hi...

Mid Century Modern, American Abstract Expressionist Painting on Masonite. This wonderful work in exciting colors is housed in a contemporary white wood frame presentation.. The art...