Norman Bluhm

Untitled

1972

Acrylic on canvas. Signed, titled, and dated on verso. 34.25 x 87.5 in. 36 x 89.5 in. (framed) Custom framed in in a natural cherry floater. Provenance Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto Born Josef Drapell in German-occupied territory near Prague in the present-day Czech Republic, his interest in art was piqued as a young boy growing up in a country that traded one occupier for the next. Czechoslovakia - under communist Soviet control following the war - would never allow Drapell to enjoy true freedom of artistic expression. He eventually fled his homeland, first stopping in Vienna, before ultimately settling in Canada in 1966. After a brief spell at the venerable Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Drapell returned to Canada in 1970, settling in Toronto - though he frequently traveled between the two countries in pursuit of exhibition opportunities in both Toronto and New York. Those opportunities arrived almost immediately, as he enjoyed solo exhibitions with both Robert Elkon Gallery in New York, and Dunkelman Gallery back home in Toronto. Drapell splits time between his homes in Toronto and Georgian Bay on Lake Huron...

Oil, pastel, and paper collage on canvas. Signed and dated verso. 52.75 x 47.75 in. 54 x 49 in. (framed) Gilded floater frame. Provenance Compass Rose, Chicago Born Sylvan Irwin Goldberg in 1924 and raised in the Bronx, Michael Goldberg was an important figure in American Abstract Expressionism, who began taking art classes at the Art Students League in 1938. A gifted student, Goldberg finished high school at the age of 14 and enrolled in City College. He soon found New York’s jazz scene to be a more compelling environment, and he began skipping classes in favor of the Harlem jazz clubs near campus. Goldberg’s love of jazz would become a lifelong passion and a key component to his approach to composition in his paintings. From 1940 to 1942, like many of the leading artists of the New York School, Goldberg studied with Hans Hofmann. In 1943, he put his pursuit of painting on hold and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Serving in North Africa, Burma, and India, Goldberg received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star before being discharged in 1946. After his service, he traveled and worked in Venezuela before returning to the United States, settling back in New York and resuming studies with Hofmann and at the Art Students League. Living downtown and frequenting the Cedar Bar, Goldberg befriended many of the artists of the New York School. In 1951, his work was included in the groundbreaking Ninth Street Show, co-organized by Leo Castelli, Conrad Marca-Relli, and the Eighth Street Club, and featuring the work of - among others - Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. In 1953, the Tibor de Nagy...

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...

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right, signed and sequentially numbered on verso. 44 x 30.25 in. 47.5 x 33.75 in. (framed) Custom framed in a two-tiered matte white hardwood tray frame. Provenance Estate of Norman Carton Norman Carton was born in the Ukraine, eventually immigrating to the U.S. in 1922 and settling in Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. In the 1930s, he received a scholarship to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). Between 1939 and 1942, the Works Project Administration (WPA) employed Carton as a muralist. During World War II, Carton was a naval structural designer and draftsman at the Cramps...

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. 51 x 38 in. 52.5 x 39.25 in. (framed) Framed in maple. Gabriel Godard, a self-taught painter, was born in 1933 in Delouze, France. Hist...

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right and verso, titled verso. 39.25 x 31.75 in. 40.25 x 32.75 in. (framed) Custom framed in maple. Philippe Hosiasson was born and grew up i...

Assemblage of 16 canvases 8.5 x 11 inches each one, total assemblage size 37 x 47 inches (direction installation sheet will be provided) Framing option is available. This painting i...

Robert Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110C 1968 Acrylic and graphite on paper 15.2 x 20.3 cms (6 x 8 ins) Robert Motherwell's Elegies series represent one of the iconic motifs of Abstract Expressionism.  Based on a 1948 ink illustration the artist executed accompanying a Harold Rosenberg poem, “A Bird for every bird,” the drawing shows the hypnotically repetitive patterning of ovoids and vertical beams.  The stark contrast of the black ink on white paper references the symbolic use of the color black by artists such as Goya, Manet and Matisse to convey death, loss, and tragedy.  Motherwell was quite affected by the turbulence of the Spanish Civil War and alludes to the Spanish republic in his Elegies. Motherwell’s plumbing the depths of poetry, history, and primordial art in the Elegies is considered a hallmark of nascent Abstract Expressionist painting in its desire to "excavate" essential imagery of mankind. Motherwell, who originally trained as a philosophy scholar and later became of the great editors of 20th century art documents, grasped very early on the crucial importance that in order to contribute meaningfully to the canon of modern art, one must create a principle of aesthetics. Through the surrealist concept of automatism, the artist finally found the creative principle that eventually governed his extraordinary artistic output and produced the Elegies, one of the most salient, immediate painterly images of 20th century abstract painting. In fact, he has alluded to the fact that each one of his Elegies begins as an automatic drawing, and certain shapes are then blocked to create the signature armature of the vertical bars and ovals. The Elegies seem to possess the power of an archetypal image, an image the mind already grasps on a subconscious level. Motherwell's play of dualities of black and white as well as other dichotomies—the geometric versus the organic, chaos versus order, death versus life—was a condition of living through a tumultuous period in American history. During an interview, he vividly recalled the 1940s as the time when society was ordered by a set of contradictions.  In Motherwell's Elegies, he not only discovered an incredibly elastic pictorial language that would communicate on multiple levels but also acknowledged these contradictions in a manner that would resonate in abstract form.  The present work served as a model for a painting, Spanish Elegy...

Signed verso, 'Kevin Keaney' (American, born 1962) and painted circa 1995. This San Francisco Bay area artist studied with Jerry Morgan at the San Francisco Art Institute and has ex...

Judy Pfaff original signed paper and mixed media 3D collage, ca. 1986 Mixed media 3:D paper collage with vinyl signed and inscribed "To Connie Love Judy Pfaff" in marker on the front...

Marcelle Ferron (1924-2001) is one of the most important artists from Quebec. A master of abstraction, she is one of the two women who signed the Refus Global in 1948 and exhibited w...

This abstract oil painting by late Houston artist Dick Wray expresses a striking kinetic energy. Thick layers of paint foster a remarkable tactility commonly found in Dick Wray’s art...