Michael Pauker

Red, Black and Blue Abstract Expressionism

1977

Moody figurative abstract expressionist painting of a Victorian couple with an angel by artist David Rosen (American, 1912-2004), c. 1970. Signed "Rosen" lower right. Unframed. Image size: 30.25"H x 26.38"W. Born in 1912, Rosen grew up in Toronto, Canada before pursuing arts in the United States. Upon arriving, Rosen settled in New York City and attended the Cooper Union Art school in 1930. While participating in the Federal Arts Project, he worked for the program's mural department until 1941. He also worked with an artist collective, Siqueiros Art Workshop. There, Rosen met fellow FAP artist Jackson Pollack, and together, with artist Phillip Guston, they experimented with new painting techniques and mediums. Art movements are often reactions to the popular styles that precede them, and Abstract Expressionism applied a new and exciting method to Modern Art. Gradually, artists began to break away from an overly-studied, academic approach to painting and liberated their technique. During these workshops, Rosen was introduced to Pollack's groundbreaking "drip painting" before it changed the art world. As America became involved in World War II, the Federal Arts Project wound down, officially ending in 1942. Around this time, Rosen enlisted as a Merchant Seaman with the U.S Merchant Marines. During this time, he traveled to North Africa and Italy before concluding his service and moving to California where, in 1945, he devoted his full attention to building an art career. Within a couple of years, he landed a major exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1947, and his first one-man show, which opened to rave reviews, was held at Hollywood's Contemporary Art Gallery. The exhibition’s success led to mural commissions from Palm Springs' Hotel del Tahquitz, and he scored more solo shows at West Hollywood's Chabot Gallery. The early 1950s brought a surge of recognition for Rosen's career, and while his work was certainly still influenced by Abstract Expression, his painting style included elements of Surrealism, Figurative Art, and Cubism. Like his colleague Jackson Pollack, Rosen produced work inspired by drip painting; however, rather than splattering, his drips were the natural flow marks from painting freely without regard for "mistakes." Throughout Rosen's long career, he would acquire techniques from vastly different art styles which made for a varied, eclectic catalog of work. Rosen continued to build his California art career and settled at a Laguna Beach art colony in 1958. There, he entered his work in the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts and was the first painter to contribute Abstract Art to the event. Rosen would participate in the festival for the next fifteen years. A year after his move, in 1959, Rosen opened his first studio gallery and began a 12-year collaboration with the Laguna Playhouse. For the next two decades, Rosen participated in 17 art exhibitions and 20 solo shows, and received considerable critical praise. Rosen's themes were as varied as his evolving painting style, and one of his themes focused on classic characters like Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rosen's close-up portraits of historical and literary figures, illustrated by the piece To Be or Not to Be: Soliloquy From Hamlet, capture the essence of the characters while remaining loose with the painting and even adding a slight cartoon feel. His ongoing Hamlet series, as a complete collection, makes an impact with the diversity of technique. Unlike the loose style of some of his works, the painting Madaam... that he is mad is true is influenced by the structure of Cubism, the flat dimensions of Byzantine Art, and his utilization of mixed media. After Rosen's death in 2004, the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts sponsored an exhibition of his Hamlet paintings at the Wells Fargo Building gallery. Throughout Rosen's career, he amassed a great deal of critical, industry, and public praise for his work. His beloved town of Laguna Beach bestowed numerous awards that include the Laguna Beach Annual Art Gallery Award and Orange County's Annual Exhibit Award. Rosen's work flourished in California, and he received recognition from the San Diego County Fair, Los Angeles' Miracle Mile...

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...

A lighthearted figurative abstract by Bay Area artist Kristin Cohen (American, b.1963). Signed and dated lower left, "Cohen '95." Presented in the artist's painted wood frame. From ...

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...

Ben Wilson Rock Candy Mountain, ca. 1970 Oil on masonite board (Hand Signed, titled and dated) Hand signed, titled and dated by Ben Wilson on the back Frame Included: held in artist's original vintage 1970 wood frame This stunning painting with candy colors is done by the second generation Abstract Expressionist artist Ben Wilson - one of the youngest artists to be given a show at prestigious ACA Gallery in 1940. In 2017, he was the subject of a career retrospective at the George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University from September 6 to November 4 and it was accompanied by a catalogue. Measurements: Frame: 23.5 x 47.5 x 1 inch Artwork: 25 x 49 inches About Ben Wilson: Ben Wilson was born in Philadelphia in 1913 to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Kiev and settled in New York City. He was educated in Manhattan public schools and graduated from City College in 1935. To gain exposure to a wider range of styles, he also studied at the National Academy of Design and at the Educational Alliance. Admired by critics throughout his long career, Wilson was singled out as a “discovery” by the New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewel even before his first one-man show at the Galerie Neuf in 1946. His paintings of the ’30s and ’40s were expressionistically rendered, often Biblical parables, filled with what he called “the grief of the intolerable” and reflecting an acute awareness of the agony of the time, from the Holocaust to the Spanish Civil War. A WPA artist who identified strongly with the plight of the Jews in Europe, he relentlessly explored themes of war, torment, and futility in his early decades of painting. When times changed and social pressures subsided, Wilson’s mood lifted. He spent 1952-54 in Paris working at the Academie Julien. During the ’50s his involvement with specific imagery persisted but became more psychological and mythic in orientation. Influenced by Cubism, he created a vocabulary of interlocking shapes and bold, sweeping gestures that served as a transition between his early figurative expressionism and his later abstract constructivist concerns. Towards the end of the decade Wilson reached a crossroads, moving towards abstraction and searching for what he called “a scaffolding under the externals.” By 1960, influenced by the Russian Constructivists, Mondrian, and Abstract Expressionism, Wilson turned to abstraction. Reexamining the basic elements of painting, he evolved his own personal vocabulary and structure, fusing the cerebral and the emotive. He became increasingly experimental, using house paint, sand, and other unorthodox materials in paintings that he worked from all directions, dripping, spraying, stenciling, and collaging. He employed elements of disjunction, repetitions of geometric motifs, linear networks, and complex overlays to create the transparent, multi-layer development of space that characterizes his later paintings. A consummate draftsman, Wilson filled notebook after notebook with drawings that he amplified in his paintings. Eschewing popular movements, Wilson was always one to pursue a personal aesthetic. Despite more than 30 one-man shows and 50 years of teaching, he increasingly withdrew from the gallery scene but continued to paint daily until his death at age 88 in 2001 in Blairstown, New Jersey, where he and his sculptor wife Evelyn Wilson...

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...

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

Artist: Laurent Marcel Salinas, French (1913 - 2010) Title: Untitled, Grass 263 Medium: Oil on Masonite, signed LR Size: 15 x 18 inches