1930s Abstract Paintings

Reversible Composition, c. 1937, oil on composition board, signed verso in pencil, 12 x 15 / 15 x 12 inches, “#11” “22” and #104” annotated verso, label verso reads on one side: “Cha...

Exotischer Klang (Exotic Sound), 1930 (after) Paul Klee (Original work) is Pen and ink, pencil, and watercolour on paper, mounted on card, 47 × 61.3/62.3cm. Dusseldorf, North Rhine-...

Impressive American impressionist winter landscape oil painting. Framed. Oil on board. Signed. Image size, 9H by 11L.

De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965). Christopher Street, 1939. Watercolor on Arches wove paper. Signed and dated in pencil by artist lower margin. Sheet measures 15.5 x 20 inches. Window in matting measures 15 x 19 inches. Framed measurement: 23 x 30 inched. Bears fragment of original label affixed on verso. Incredibly vibrant and saturated color with no fading or toning of sheet. Provenance: Babcock Galleries, NYC Exhibited: The American Federation of Arts Traveling Exhibition. From the facade of The Waverly at Christopher is depicted One Christopher Street, the 16-story Art Deco residential building erected in 1931. It is not a casual coincidence that the structure appears in this cityscape: 1 Christopher Street is the subject. The original intention of this project was to transform the neighborhood, bring a bit of affluence and make a bid to rival the Upper West Side. Margules, a sensitive aesthete, understood how a massive piece of architecture such as One changes a neighborhood. Sound, scale and focal points are forever altered. A pedestrian's sense of depth and distance becomes pronounced. All of these factors contribute to the intent behind this image. Tall buildings disrupt the human scale, change the skyline and carve up space. In this piece, negative space conforms to the man-made geometries. Clouds become gems fixed in settings. De Hirsh Margules (1899–1965) was a Romanian-American "abstract realist" painter who crossed paths with many major American artistic and intellectual figures of the first half of the 20th century. Elaine de Kooning said that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country". The New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium" Margules was also a well-known participant in the bohemian culture of New York City's Greenwich Village, where he was widely known as the "Baron" of Greenwich Village.[1] The New York Times described him as "one of Greenwich Village's best-known personalities" and "one of the best known and most buoyant characters about Greenwich Village. Early Life De Hirsh Margules was born in 1899 in the Romanian city of Iași (also known as Iasse, Jassy, or Jasse). When Margules was 10 weeks old, his family immigrated to New York City. Both of his parents were active in the Yiddish theater, His father was Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, a "renowned Jewish actor-impresario and founder of the Yiddish stage." Margules' mother, Rosa, thirty-nine years younger than his father, was an actress in the Yiddish theater and later in vaudeville. Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family[11] and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules, somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad Tondelayo (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo. Annette herself faced stereotyping as an exotic flower: writing about her publicist Charles Bouchert stated that "Romania produces a stormy, temperamental type of woman---a type admirably fitted to portray emotion." His brother Samuel became a noted magician who appeared under the name "Rami-Sami." Samuel later became a lawyer, representing magician Horace Goldin, among others. A family portrait including a young De Hirsh, a portrait of Rosa and Annette together, and individual photos of Rosa and Edward can be found on the Museum of the City of New York website. At around age 9 or 10, Margules took art classes with the Boys Club on East Tenth Street, and his first taste of exhibition was at a student art show presented by the club. By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamakers. As a young teenager, Margules was already displaying a characteristic kindness and loyalty. Upon hearing that two friends (one of them was author Alexander King), were in trouble for breaking a school microscope, the nearly broke Margules gave them five dollars to repair the microscope . Margules had to approach a wealthy man that Margules had once saved on the subway from a heart attack. Margules didn't reveal the source of the five dollars to King until twenty-five years later. In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington. Thereafter he pursued a two-year course of studies in architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design, while working as a clerk during the day at Stern's Department Store. He was encouraged in these artistic pursuits by his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein (who later went by the name of Benjamin Benno). Artistic career In 1922, Margules began work as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York .Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?" This led to study with Lechay and a flurry of painting. Margules' first show was in 1922 at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery. Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe. Jane Heap, left, with Mina Loy and Ezra Pound During the 1920s, Margules traveled outside of the country a number of times. In 1922, with the intent of reaching Bali, he took a job as a "'wiper on a tramp steamer where [he] played nursemaid to the engine." He reached Rotterdam before he turned back. He would return to Rotterdam shortly thereafter. In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water." He studied at the Louvre and traveled to paint landscapes in provincial France and North Africa. Margules also joined the "Noctambulist" movement and experimented with painting and showing his artwork in low light.Jonathan Cott wrote that: the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark. In fact, the first exhibition of these paintings, which could be seen only in a darkened room, took place in [ Walter Lowenfels'] Paris apartment. Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow." It was also in Paris that Margules initially conceived his idea of "Time Painting", where a painting is divided into sectors, each representing a different time of day, with color choices meant to evoke that time of day. In Paris, his social circle included Lowenfels, photographer Berenice Abbott, publisher Jane Heap, composer George Anthiel, sculptor Thelma Wood, painter André Favory, writer Norman Douglas, writer and editor George Davis, composer and writer Max Ewing, and writer Michael Fraenkel. Upon his return to New York in 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin's paintings. While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The famous photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends." Alfred Stieglitz Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "indebted to Marin and through Marin to Cézanne for his initial conceptual approach - for his constructions of scenes with no negative elements, for skies that loom with the impact of mountains." Margules himself said that Marin was his "father and ... academy." The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing." Stieglitz also introduced Margules to many other artistic and intellectual figures in New York. With the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Margules in 1936 opened a two-room gallery at 43 West 8th Street called "Another Place." Over the following two years there were fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and others, and the gallery was well-respected by the press. It was in this gallery that the painter James Lechay, Myron's brother, exhibited his first painting. In 1936, Margules first saw recognition by major art museums when both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased his works. In 1942, Margules gave up working as a police reporter, and apparently dedicated himself thereafter solely to an artistic vocation. "The Baron of Greenwich Village"[edit] Margules made his mark not only as an artist, but also as an outsized personality known throughout Greenwich Village and beyond. To local residents, Margules was known as the "Baron", after Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a prominent German Jewish philanthropist. Margules was easily recognizable by the beret he routinely wore over his long hair. Writer Charles Norman said that he "dressed with a flair for sloppiness." He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body. Margules' letters show him interacting with art world figures such as Sacha Kolin, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as with prominent figures outside the art world such as polymath Buckminster Fuller and writer Henry Miller. Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty. In 1929, he exhibited an example of this loyalty and fellow-feeling when he appeared in court to fight what the wrongful commitment of his friend, writer and sculptor Alfred Dreyfuss, who appeared to have been a victim of an illicit attempt to block an inheritance. The Greenwich Village chronicler Charles Norman described the bone-crushing hugs that Margules would routinely bestow on his friends and acquaintances, and speaks of the "persuasive theatricality" that Margules seemed to have inherited from his actor parents. Norman also wrote about Margules' routine acts of kindness, taking in homeless artists, constantly feeding his friends and providing the salvatory loan where needed. Norman also notes that Margules was blessed with a loud and good voice, and was apt to sing an operatic air without provocation. The writer and television personality Alexander King said I think the outstanding characteristics of my friend's personality are affirmation, emphasis, and overemphasis. He chooses to express himself predominantly in superlatives and the gestures which accompany his utterances are sometimes dangerous to life and limb. Of the bystanders, I mean. King also spoke with affectionate amusement about Margules' pride in his cooking, speaking of how "if he should ever invite you to dinner, he may serve you a hamburger with onions, in his kitchen-living room, with such an air of gastronomic protocol, such mysterious hints and ogliing innuendoes, as if César Ritz and Brillat-Savarin had sneaked out, only a moment before, with his secret recipe in their pockets." Margules was such a memorable New York personality that comic book writer Alvin Schwartz imagined him at the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria in a risible yet poignant debate with Clark Kent about whether Superman had the ability to stop Hitler. Margules' entrenchment in the Greenwich Village milieu can be seen in a photograph from Fred McDarrah's "Beat Generation Album" of a January 13, 1961 writers' and poets' meeting to discuss "The Funeral of the Beat Generation", in Robert Cordier [fr]'s railroad flat at 85 Christopher Street. Among the people in the same photograph are Shel Silverstein...

Antique American abstract expressionist painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Measuring: 37 by 43 inches overall, and 36 by 42 painting alone. In excellent original condition. ...

Abram Tromka (1895-1964) City at Night, ca. 1940. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches; 20 x 24 inches in antique oak frame. Signed lower right. Frame is of the period, but probably not ...

Antique American modernist surreal oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed illegibly.

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 29 x 22 inches, Signed on frame verso “Painted by Charles L. Goeller” Exhibited: (Perh...

Energy Manifestation #4, 1933, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, signed and dated lower left. Likely exhibited at Nicolaides’ solo show at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Morgan Memorial Building), Hartford, Connecticut, in April, 1933 (see Memorial Opens Varied Display of Nicolaides Work, Originality Distinguishes Creations of New York City Artist, Hartford Courant, April 5, 1933) About the Painting This rare work comes from Nicolaides’ energy series, which draws on a unique combination of machine- age aesthetics, Italian-influenced Futurism and French-inspired Surrealism. But, this is a uniquely American work produced in the melting pot of the 1930s metropolis, New York City. Nicolaides uses the ray lines of the American precisionists to frame a pulsating apparatus that unites man and machine as one. The cogs and gears of the fantasy machine seamlessly blend with the hand of its operator. We are left to wonder whether the two are working together in harmony or whether the worker has been absorbed into the machine, like a Depression era robot. In reviewing the 1933 Wadsworth Atheneum show, where works from Nicolaides’ energy series were exhibited, a critic described these paintings as “combining . . . highly imaginative form aspects of machinery and flashes of color which seem to represent light and heat.” The same critic praised the artist, “Mr. Nicolaides here achieves powerful effects with line, mass and color. These pictures are striking for the solidity of the objects portrayed, for their composition and for their delicate orchestration of tones.” Commenting on the same exhibition, Frederick Hynd, the director of the Hartford Art School, noted that “Mr. Nicolaides’ work was noteworthy for its extremely personal sense of color and for its imagination” and that the artist achieved decorative effects “based on emotional ideas.” About the Artist Kimon Nicolaides...

Antique American school seascape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Image size, 30L x 24H.

Antique American modernist signed interior oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 9L x 10H. Provenance from the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Vintage American modernist abstract interior painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1930. No signature found. Image size, 20L x 16H. Framing available.

Karl Drerup (1904-2000). Italian City, c.1930. Oil on masonite panel, 24 x 32 inches; 34 x 42 in custom frame. Signed lower right. Minor conservation to loss in margins. Price on request Biography: Born in Borghorst, Germany in 1904, Karl Drerup earned a Master’s Degree in graphic arts working under Hans Meid...

Antique American modernist kitchen table fruit still life . Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring: 15 by 12 inches overall Excellent condition, ready to hang and enjoy.

Signed and dated "Vytlacil 38" lower left, and signed and dated verso. Provenance: Estate of the artist #1602; Martin Diamond Fine Art About this artist: Born in 1892 to Czechoslov...

De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965). North on West Street , 1939. Watercolor on Arches wove paper. Signed and dated in pencil by artist lower margin. Sheet measures 15 x 22 inches. Framed measurement: 27 x 34 inched. Incredibly vibrant and saturated color with no fading or toning of sheet. Provenance: Babcock Galleries, NYC De Hirsh Margules (1899–1965) was a Romanian-American "abstract realist" painter who crossed paths with many major American artistic and intellectual figures of the first half of the 20th century. Elaine de Kooning said that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country". The New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium" Margules was also a well-known participant in the bohemian culture of New York City's Greenwich Village, where he was widely known as the "Baron" of Greenwich Village.[1] The New York Times described him as "one of Greenwich Village's best-known personalities" and "one of the best known and most buoyant characters about Greenwich Village. Early Life De Hirsh Margules was born in 1899 in the Romanian city of Iași (also known as Iasse, Jassy, or Jasse). When Margules was 10 weeks old, his family immigrated to New York City. Both of his parents were active in the Yiddish theater, His father was Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, a "renowned Jewish actor-impresario and founder of the Yiddish stage." Margules' mother, Rosa, thirty-nine years younger than his father, was an actress in the Yiddish theater and later in vaudeville. Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family[11] and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules, somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad Tondelayo (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo. Annette herself faced stereotyping as an exotic flower: writing about her publicist Charles Bouchert stated that "Romania produces a stormy, temperamental type of woman---a type admirably fitted to portray emotion." His brother Samuel became a noted magician who appeared under the name "Rami-Sami." Samuel later became a lawyer, representing magician Horace Goldin, among others. A family portrait including a young De Hirsh, a portrait of Rosa and Annette together, and individual photos of Rosa and Edward can be found on the Museum of the City of New York website. At around age 9 or 10, Margules took art classes with the Boys Club on East Tenth Street, and his first taste of exhibition was at a student art show presented by the club. By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamakers. As a young teenager, Margules was already displaying a characteristic kindness and loyalty. Upon hearing that two friends (one of them was author Alexander King), were in trouble for breaking a school microscope, the nearly broke Margules gave them five dollars to repair the microscope . Margules had to approach a wealthy man that Margules had once saved on the subway from a heart attack. Margules didn't reveal the source of the five dollars to King until twenty-five years later. In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington. Thereafter he pursued a two-year course of studies in architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design, while working as a clerk during the day at Stern's Department Store. He was encouraged in these artistic pursuits by his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein (who later went by the name of Benjamin Benno). Artistic career In 1922, Margules began work as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York .Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?" This led to study with Lechay and a flurry of painting. Margules' first show was in 1922 at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery. Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe. Jane Heap, left, with Mina Loy and Ezra Pound During the 1920s, Margules traveled outside of the country a number of times. In 1922, with the intent of reaching Bali, he took a job as a "'wiper on a tramp steamer where [he] played nursemaid to the engine." He reached Rotterdam before he turned back. He would return to Rotterdam shortly thereafter. In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water." He studied at the Louvre and traveled to paint landscapes in provincial France and North Africa. Margules also joined the "Noctambulist" movement and experimented with painting and showing his artwork in low light.Jonathan Cott wrote that: the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark. In fact, the first exhibition of these paintings, which could be seen only in a darkened room, took place in [ Walter Lowenfels'] Paris apartment. Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow." It was also in Paris that Margules initially conceived his idea of "Time Painting", where a painting is divided into sectors, each representing a different time of day, with color choices meant to evoke that time of day. In Paris, his social circle included Lowenfels, photographer Berenice Abbott, publisher Jane Heap, composer George Anthiel, sculptor Thelma Wood, painter André Favory, writer Norman Douglas, writer and editor George Davis, composer and writer Max Ewing, and writer Michael Fraenkel. Upon his return to New York in 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin's paintings. While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The famous photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends." Alfred Stieglitz Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "indebted to Marin and through Marin to Cézanne for his initial conceptual approach - for his constructions of scenes with no negative elements, for skies that loom with the impact of mountains." Margules himself said that Marin was his "father and ... academy." The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing." Stieglitz also introduced Margules to many other artistic and intellectual figures in New York. With the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Margules in 1936 opened a two-room gallery at 43 West 8th Street called "Another Place." Over the following two years there were fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and others, and the gallery was well-respected by the press. It was in this gallery that the painter James Lechay, Myron's brother, exhibited his first painting. In 1936, Margules first saw recognition by major art museums when both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased his works. In 1942, Margules gave up working as a police reporter, and apparently dedicated himself thereafter solely to an artistic vocation. "The Baron of Greenwich Village"[edit] Margules made his mark not only as an artist, but also as an outsized personality known throughout Greenwich Village and beyond. To local residents, Margules was known as the "Baron", after Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a prominent German Jewish philanthropist. Margules was easily recognizable by the beret he routinely wore over his long hair. Writer Charles Norman said that he "dressed with a flair for sloppiness." He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body. Margules' letters show him interacting with art world figures such as Sacha Kolin, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as with prominent figures outside the art world such as polymath Buckminster Fuller and writer Henry Miller. Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty. In 1929, he exhibited an example of this loyalty and fellow-feeling when he appeared in court to fight what the wrongful commitment of his friend, writer and sculptor Alfred Dreyfuss, who appeared to have been a victim of an illicit attempt to block an inheritance. The Greenwich Village chronicler Charles Norman described the bone-crushing hugs that Margules would routinely bestow on his friends and acquaintances, and speaks of the "persuasive theatricality" that Margules seemed to have inherited from his actor parents. Norman also wrote about Margules' routine acts of kindness, taking in homeless artists, constantly feeding his friends and providing the salvatory loan where needed. Norman also notes that Margules was blessed with a loud and good voice, and was apt to sing an operatic air without provocation. The writer and television personality Alexander King said I think the outstanding characteristics of my friend's personality are affirmation, emphasis, and overemphasis. He chooses to express himself predominantly in superlatives and the gestures which accompany his utterances are sometimes dangerous to life and limb. Of the bystanders, I mean. King also spoke with affectionate amusement about Margules' pride in his cooking, speaking of how "if he should ever invite you to dinner, he may serve you a hamburger with onions, in his kitchen-living room, with such an air of gastronomic protocol, such mysterious hints and ogliing innuendoes, as if César Ritz and Brillat-Savarin had sneaked out, only a moment before, with his secret recipe in their pockets." Margules was such a memorable New York personality that comic book writer Alvin Schwartz imagined him at the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria in a risible yet poignant debate with Clark Kent about whether Superman had the ability to stop Hitler. Margules' entrenchment in the Greenwich Village milieu can be seen in a photograph from Fred McDarrah's "Beat Generation Album" of a January 13, 1961 writers' and poets' meeting to discuss "The Funeral of the Beat Generation", in Robert Cordier [fr]'s railroad flat at 85 Christopher Street. Among the people in the same photograph are Shel Silverstein...

Oil and colored sand on canvas realized by Irina Zdanko (1905-1999) in the 1930s. Not signed. In Excellent condition, it includes a beautiful contemporary wooden frame. Prov. Priv...

Charles Evans (1907-1992) Mediterranean Costal Town, 1932. Gouache and watercolor on paper. Sheet measures 8.5 x 10 inches; mounted in frame measuring 8.5 x 10 inches. Signed and dated lower left. Charles Evans was a modernist known for his abstract style of painting. He studied at New York's Art Students League and Parsons School of Design, and later in Paris with Fernand Lger at the Acadmie Moderne. In 1930, Evans and his wife spent a year living in what was Paul Cezanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence, France. The following year, Evans purchased the old silk mill in New Hope and became involved in the area's modernist movement, joining the Independents in 1932. By 1935, he began to work collaboratively with Louis Stone, whom he had met in 1929 while studying with Hans Hofman in Saint Tropez, and with Charles F. Ramsey, teaching art classes and working on the Cooperative Painting Project. Every week, the three were joined by the abstract painter, Lee Gatch, in discussions at Ledger's Inn in Lambertville. In 1948 Evans co-founded the New Hope Gazette with Walter M. Teller. The same year he created set designs for St. John Terrell's Lambertville Music Circus. He also designed sets for the Bucks County Playhouse and Philadelphia's Playhouse in the Park. He later served as Set Designer for the Fred Miller...

Antique American modernist landscape abstraction. Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed. Image size 30L x 25H. Housed in a period modern frame.

Vintage modernist abstract musical painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a giltwood molding. Excellent condition, ready to hang ...

Sea and Land Abstraction, 1936, oil on canvas board, 16 x 20 inches, signed and dated lower left, exhibited at the 18th Annual Paintings and Sculpture Exhibit at the Los Angeles Muse...

Antique American modernist abstract pastel and watercolor painting. Signed illegibly. Framed. Image size, 14L x 18H.

Lambert Werner (1900-1983) Untitled, 1937 Oil on canvas 21 7/10 × 19 7/10 in l 55 × 50 cm 23 2/3 x 21 2/3 l 60 x 55 cm (Frame included) Signed and dated lower left Exhibition histor...

Antique American school modernist mixed media painting. Oil on board with gold leaf assemblage, circa 1930. Unsigned. Image size, 13L x 17H. Housed in a period wood frame most li...

Exceptional early American abstract oil painting by California artist Helen Clark Oldfield. Helen Clark Oldfield, (1902–1981), was born in Santa Rosa, CA. She studied art and design...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...

This is a Autograph Letter Signed by Jean Dubuffet and addressed to Nesto Jacometti. Vence, November 28th, 1957. One page, single-sided. On watermarked paper. In French. excellent c...

A dramatic, Cubist oil on canvas painting in beautiful burled walnut frame with gilt-wood inset. Signature lower left.

Antique American school cubist abstract oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed.

Impressive early American modernist urban backyard scene. Framed. Oil on board. Signed. Image size, 18H by 24L.

A cubist composition with harbor motif with ship and crane. Pastel on paper, signed lower left, Eric Erixon (Swedish, active early 20th century), probably executed in the 1930´s. The...

Cubist/Modernist Composition, ca. 1930's. Oil on artist panel, measuring 9.5 x 11 inches; 10.5 x 12 inches in original frame. Unsigned.

This compelling early composition by Jean Lurçat reflects the artist's distinctive fusion of Cubist structure, Surrealist imagination, and maritime symbolism. Titled La Bataille de T...

Balcomb Greene Composition, 1936 Signed Balcomb Greene on verso upper stretcher bar Signed on backing board: Balcomb Greene Oil on canvas 30 1/4 x 46 inches Provenance: The artist A...

Nice quality modernist painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Image size, 16L x 12H.

Vintage American modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Measuring: 13 by 17 inches overall, and 9.5 by 13.5 painting alone. In excellent original condition...

A Judaica painting with Hebrew Calligraphy by noted Chicago Modernist. Alexander Raymond Katz (his Hungarian first name, Sandor, was anglicized to Alexander) was born in Kassa, Hunga...

William Baziotes (1912 - 1963) Untitled, circa 1935-1940 Oil on board 14 x 19 3/4 inches Illegible Inscription present to the verso Provenance: Previously from the estate of Consta...

Rooftop view of the upper West Side Manhattan as it looked in the 1930s. There is a rough indication of a billboard and a glimpse of the Hudson River. The cluster of buildings depic...

Antique American abstract cubist table top still life oil painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1930. No signature found. Image size, 20L x 16H. Framing available.

In 1945 Goetz worked with René Guilly on a national radio program called The World of Paris. He continued broadcasting for six months before giving his position to someone else. In 1...

This captivating Surrealist composition by Jean Lurçat reveals the artist at his most imaginative and poetic. Set within a dreamlike landscape, the painting combines fragmented archi...

Abstract Cubist Construction Collage Mid 20th Century American Modernism Cubism Vaclav Vytacil (1892 - 1984) Abstract Construction #2 Caesin on board collage 11 x 13 1/2 th inches S...

In 1945 Goetz worked with René Guilly on a national radio program called The World of Paris. He continued broadcasting for six months before giving his position to someone else. In 1...

Signed and dated "Biederman 4-35" lower right. About this artist: Charles Joseph Biederman was a twentieth century abstract American artist best known for his constructivist, cubist...

Exceptional American modernist painting by Charles Shepard Chapman. Charles Shepard Chapman, (1879-1962), was a supremely talented American artist. Born in New York, Chapman studied...

"Cellar with Horseshoe" WPA American Scene Modernism 20th Century NYC Industrial Joseph Solman (1909-2008) "Cellar with Horseshoe" 16 x 20 inches, c. 1938 Oil on canvas Initialed "...

A beautiful early 20th century European h oil on board depicting an abstract composition. Excellent quality work painted with fast impasto brush strokes. Indistinctly signed lower le...

Professor George De Goya. PhD. MA. FRSA. Born In Budapest, 1915-1992, related to the Spanish artist Goya on his mother’s side. Educated in Budapest and France where he received a de...

'Abstract, Turquoise and Gray' by Dora Maar. Paris, Picasso, Andre L'Hote, Guernica, Benezit ----- Signed verso with artist monogram 'DM' for Dora Maar (Argentine-French, 1907-1997)...

A rare visionary sand painting by Kiowa Peyote Priest, Chief Charging Skunk, housed in a hand carved and painted frame, created by the artist. Works by Chief Charging Skunk are hard...

ALFRED RETH 1884-1966 Budapest 1884-1966 Paris (Hungarian/French) Title: Abstract Composition, 1939 Technique: Original Signed and Dated Oil and Mixed Technique painting on Board ...

This extraordinary oil on canvas painting by American artist William Freed (1902–1984) captures the dynamic energy and stylized elegance of the Art Deco era. Painted circa 1937, the ...

Antique American impressionist signed still life oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 25L x 19H.

'Characters in a Surrealist Landscape', oil on canvas, by Lucien Coutaud (1931). A couple entwine with the male character seemingly in grief, the female not returning with a comforting embrace. In the distant landscape a sole character meanders. This painting seems to be a creation of the artist's dreams, perhaps reflecting events in his personal life. It seems there is a relationship problem. In the world of Surrealists, there is a focus on the unconscious mind through Freudian methods of free association, trance-like states or dreams. Some Surrealists practiced psychic 'automatism' which was automatic writing or drawing, turning off the conscious mind and producing streams of words or images directly from the unconscious. In unlocking the unconscious in this way, Surrealism was individually expressed (Ref. 'The Short Story of Art...

Rolph Scarlett (Canadian/American, 1889 - 1984) “Geometric Composition” Signed lower right, circa late 1930’s early 1940’s 19 ½ x 26 inches Mixed media, Price on request About Rolph Scarlett was a painter of geometric and linear forms, an industrial designer, and a pioneer in helping establish non-objective art as an aesthetic in America. He also worked in an abstract art style during the American avant-garde movement which extended into the 1940s. He was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada and travelled to New York City as an 18-year-old. By 1924 he made New York City his home. In 1939, Scarlett was one of the founding members and forces which steered the development of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York. (later, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). Guggenheim was the sponsor behind the Avant Garde and pioneering, philosophy of Baroness Hilla Rebay who founded the early museum. She was both the founding curator and director of the museum, as well as an abstract artist. She encouraged and worked with Scarlett in the early museum years, together promoting the concepts of non-objective painting. In Scarlett’s aesthetic these where geometric elements intuitively placed in non-descript flat and three-dimensional space. Any discussion of the history of the Guggenheim Museum must include four key figures: Hilla Rebay (1890-1967), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953), and Rolf Scarlett...

Jacques Lipchitz Watercolor with ink and wash sculptural Painting. this painting represents Lipchitz’s most iconic Bronze and stone sculpture “The Rape of Europa” which was exhibited...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...

An evocative circa 1930 gouache by Boardman Robinson (1876–1952), Vendor of Masks is a striking example of American Modernist figurative painting from the artist’s important Colorado...

Antique American oil painting by Betty Bowes (1911 - 2007). Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring: 33 by 39 inches overall, and 24 by 30 painting alone. Excellent condition, ready...