1940s Abstract Paintings

Juanita Guccione (1904 - 1999) Study for Ladders, 1948 Gouache on paper 17 x 13 inches Signed lower left, dated, and inscribed “Study for Oil Painting...

Figurative Cubist Surrealist Abstraction Mid 20th Century American Modern Large O. Louis Guglielmi (1906 - 1956) OBSESSIVE THEME 44 x 33 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated '48 lo...

A important American Impressionist painting by Isabella Howland (1895-1974), "Ocho Rios", Jamaica, 1940. Howland was active in both Boston & New York, this impressionistic painting d...

#5-2899 Antique birch trees land scape, oil on artist board displayed in a wood frame.Signed lower left by Mori.Image size 9.5 H x 7.5 W

Antique American abstract oil painting by Martin Rosenthal (1899 - 1974). Oil on board. Measuring 28 by 42 inches overall and 26 by 40 painting alone. Oil on board. Signed. In exc...

Antique American school abstract expressionist painting. Oil on board. Signed. In excellent original condition. Nicely framed in a period wood molding. Excellent condition, read...

Wonderfully painted sunset coastal beach scene. Framed. Oil on canvas. Image size, 20"H by 24"L.

5-2738a Acrylic on artist board Displayed in a vintage gilt wood frame Image size 11x15"

American modernist abstract architectural oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas. Image size, 17H by 21L.

Very impressive early American abstract expressionist painting. Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Housed in a wonderful period wide modernist frame.

Very finely painted American modernist street scene painting. Oil on canvas board. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a giltwood molding. Excellent condition, ...

Modernist landscape oil painting by Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf Martyl (1917/18 - 2013). Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 28 by 32 inches overall and 20 by 24 painting alone.

Antique American modernist cityscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Measuring 27 by 33 inches overall and 23 by 29 painting alone. In excellent original condition. Handsomely f...

Antique American school modernist watermelon still life pastel painting. Pastel on paper. Signed. Framed. Measuring 18 by 22 inches overall and 16 by 20 painting alone.

Antique American impressionist beach seascape oil painting. Oil on canvas board. Framed. Measuring 11 by 14 inches overall and 9 by 12 painting alone.

Mid Century Bay Area Abstract Expressionist Blue Hydrangeas in Acrylic on Paper Vining Blue Hydrangeas by San Francisco's artist Honora Berg (American, 1897-1985), 1946. The vertica...

Finely painted American modernist landscape by Anthony Toney (1913 - 2004) . Oil on board. Signed. Housed in a great vintage modernist frame.

This vintage 1940s gouache painting, titled Birth of Mind, is a striking example of retrofuturism by Charles Ragland Bunnell, a prominent artist from the Broadmoor Academy...

Oil on canvas. Framed. Image size, 18H x 24L.

Antique American modernist abstract street scene oil painting. Oil on board. Framed. Image size, 12L x 7H.

Vintage American school modernist painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Unsigned. Image size, 30L x 24H. Housed in a period frame.

Mid Century Abstract Original Painting - Blue Calligraphy on Crimson Water in Oil and Tempera on Paper Wonderful Bay Area abstract composition by San Francisco's artist Honora Berg ...

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Untitled, c. 1949 oil on canvas 18 x 32 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1950, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University. Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century-modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children – only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended high school. They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were - unlike Richard- rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages. At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings. He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self-teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners – each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute). He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends – which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred-dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before... the color...It just glowed.” Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller designed and made the simple gold wedding ring Avis wore for their 65 years of marriage. During those 65 years neither wavered in their mutual love, nor in the respect they shared for one another’s art. The couple lived in a converted chicken coop in Missouri while Richard was in boot camp. At the camp, he would volunteer for any job offered and one of those jobs ended up being painting road signs. His commander noticed how quickly and neatly he worked and gave him more painting work to do - eventually recommending him for a position painting murals for Army offices in Panama. Until her dying day, Avis remained angry that “The army got to keep those fabulous murals and they probably didn’t even know how wonderful they were.” In Panama, their first son, Mark, was born. After Richard’s discharge in 1953, they moved back to the Cleveland area and used the GI bill to attend Kent State gaining his BA in education. The small family then moved briefly to Buffalo, where Richard taught at the Albright Art School and the University of Buffalo – and their second son, Peter, was born. Richard had exhibited work in the Cleveland May Show and the Butler Art Museum during his art school years, and during the years in Buffalo, his work was exhibited at the gallery he had so loved as a child, the Albright Art Gallery. In 1956, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and Richard began teaching art at Lincoln West High School during the day while working toward his MA in art at Kent State in the evenings. Avis and Richard, with the help of an architect, designed their first home - a saltbox style house in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1958, their third son, Max (after Max Beckmann) was born. Richard enjoyed the consistency of teaching high school as well as the time it gave him to paint on the weekends and during the summer months. In 1961, he received his MA and his daughter, Claire, was born. With a fourth child, the house was much too small, and Avis and Richard began designing their second home. An admirer of MCM architecture, Richard’s favorite example of the style was the Farnsworth house – he often spoke of how the concepts behind this architectural style, particularly that of Mies van der Rohe, influenced his painting. Andres described himself as a 1950’s...

Very nicely painted mid century abstract beach scene. Oil on canvas. Signed illegibly. Framed elegantly.

Vintage signed large abstract oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed.

Antique American modernist signed abstract landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed.

Well painted mid 1900's impressionist beach scene painting. Oil on canvas. Framed.

Antique American modernist abstract painting. Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed. Image size 22L x 30H. Housed in a period modern frame.

Appropriately called the "Mosaic" period for important historical artist Carl Holty, this is a super example! His color use during this time frame was lively as he always used sky b...

Arthur Dove: 1880-1946. One of the most important early American Modernists and Abstract Expressionists. He has had auction results over $8,000,000 and that record was 2 weeks ago. A...

Antique American modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Signed illegibly lower left. Image size, 36L x 24H. Housed in a period modern frame.

Finely painted vintage American modernist still life. Cubist composition with great color. Oil on board. Framed. Signed.

Edward Zutrau Toucan, 7/29/1949 Dated on verso Oil on linen 30 x 23 inches Edward Zutrau (1922–1993) was an American painter whose career spanned from the 1940s through the early 1...

Impressive early American modernist street scene. Reminiscent of New Orleans or another souther city. A bustling street scene. Nicely framed. No signature found. Image size, 24...

'Still Life with Strings', ink and pencil on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). This gallery acquired this artwork with two similar works for which this one may...

This Untitled Abstract Composition in Oil on Canvas signed Joe Stefanelli is a gem of Mid-Century American Abstraction. This painting brilliantly exemplifies the approach and movemen...

Rare early American modernist cubist abstract by Anita F. Plumb. Framed. Pastel and gouache on paper. Signed. Image size, 20H by 26L.

Italian Modern Abstract Work on Paper Color Field Non-Objective European Mid-Century - "Gonage" Dorazio completed "Gonage" in 1949 when just after the artist had been awarded a stipend by the French government and admission to the Academy Beaux Arts. There he met George Braque who became great friends but also an influence on Dorazio, of which "Gonage" is a living testament. "Gonage" actual size of the drawing measures 12 x 9 1/2 inches. It is signed on the lower right. The work is affixed to a 19 x 15 inch board which includes the artist's signature and date. There is a torn table on the lower left entitling the piece "Gonage". Provenance follows this piece as a gift in 1950 to the artist-colleague Luigi Lucioni, who then gifted it in 1955 to his friend, the uncle of the current owner who has owned the work since 1988. Bio Born in Italy, Piero Dorazio studied architecture in Rome. At the same time his first abstract works were executed. In 1947 he received a scholarship from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he contacted Modern artists, who lived in Paris. He founded the galleries "Age d'Or" in Florence and Rome to represent avant-garde arts in Italy. During a one year stay in the USA he got acquainted with leading artists of Abstract Expressionism such as Marc Rothko...

Step into the enigmatic world of abstract art with this captivating original oil painting from 1945. This masterpiece, signed with a mysterious monogram by an unknown artist, embodie...

Antique American modernist abstract signed oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed illegibly. Framed. Image size, 36L x 16H.

Very finely executed modernist ballet scene. Pastel and gouache on paper. Handsomely framed. Image size, 12H by 16L.

Antique American modernist abstract painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Housed in a vintage frame. Image size, 18L x 24H.

Vintage American school abstract expressionist oil painting by Ray Prohaska (1901 - 1981). Oil on board. Very nice period frame. Signed. Exhibited at Mortimer Levitt Gallery. Im...

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...

Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Exhibited at the Butler Art Institute.

'Cubist Still Life', gouache on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). Surely this very attractive piece was inspired by Juan Gris (1887-1927) and Georges Braque's ...

Nicely executed early 1900s American impressionist coastal seacape painting. Oil on canvas. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period giltwood molding. Excel...

Large and impressive modernist landscape painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed illegibly.

Erik Ortvad (Danish, 1917 - 2008) Abstract Landscape, 1946 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 32 X 37.5 inches 35 x 40.5 inches, framed Born in 1917 in Copenhagen, Erik Ortvad was a surrealist painter and a founding member of the COBRA art...

'Fish, Dove and Musical Instrument', gouache on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). Surely this very attractive piece was inspired by Georges Braque (1882-1963) ...

Jimmy Ernst Personal Equation, 1950 Signed and dated lower right Oil on canvas 41 x 39 1/2 inches Provenance: Laurel Gallery, New York Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York Collection ...

Signed lower left, 'Hortense M. Gordon' for Hortense Crompton Mattice Gordon (Canadian, 1886-1961) and dated 1949. Previously with: Dominion Gallery of Montreal (stamp, verso). Photo courtesy of Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Hamilton artist Hortense Crompton Mattice Gordon was one of Canada’s earliest non-representational painters, embracing abstraction in the 1930s. She was also an active member of Canada's first English-speaking abstract group, Painters Eleven. A scholarship recipient, Hortense Mattice first attended the Hamilton Art School and, subsequently, moved to Chatham, Ontario. Initially focusing on porcelain painting, Mattice quickly began building a portfolio of oils and, from 1908, was exhibiting both her porcelain and landscapes at what is now the Chatham Cultural Centre (1908) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1909). During this time, Mattice frequently traveled to the United States and, in 1915, visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she would have seen early works by important modernists including Picasso and Matisse. She started her teaching career in Chatham but, having received a job offer from the artist John Sloan Gordon, returned to Hamilton to teach at the Hamilton Art School in 1918. The two artists married in 1920. In 1922, Gordon and her husband took a study trip to France and, inspired by the fervent of Modernist ideas in Paris, expanded her own approaches to art, developing an increasingly soft, loose paint handling style. It was not until the 1930’s, after a few more trips to France and her discovery of Piet Mondrian’s work, that elements of abstraction began to appear in Gordon’s work. After the death of her husband in 1940, Gordon attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art and studied with Hans Hoffmann (1941-1945) whose influence and friendship pushed her to explore non-objective painting. After her training with Hofmann and in Cranbrook, Gordon began to exhibit regularly and with success in both Canada and the United States including at the Riverside Museum (New York, 1947), Creative Gallery (New York, 1952), in Ann Arbor (Michigan, 1952), Phillips Gallery (Detroit, 1952), the Flint Institute of Arts (Michigan, 1952), Mount Allison University (New Brunswick, 1952), the Galerie Agnes Lefort in Montréal and Art Gallery of Hamilton (retrospective, 1960). She was a member of the Contemporary Artists of Hamilton (honorary president in 1948), the Ontario Society of Artists, the Hamilton Women...

Very impressive and a rare early work by Frederick E. Conway (1900 - 1973). Oil on board. Incredibly framed. Signed.

Antique American modernist flower still life painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period silver leaf molding. Excellent condi...

Rare Hawaiian landscape of coastal Maui. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Oil on canvas. Image size, 20"H x 24"L.

This beautiful oil on linen canvas painting, entitled "Rail Crossing: Middletown, was executed by the esteemed artist Jules Halfant (American, 1909-2001)...

Antique American modernist abstract expressionist painting. Oil on board, circa 1940. Image size, 24L x 20H.

6000 Antique birch trees landscape,oil on artist board displayed in a wood frame.Signed lower left by Mori.Image size 9.5 H x 7.5 W

Nicely painted early American modernist abstract landscape. Oil on canvas. Framed.

Antique American modernist signed abstract tropical oil painting. Oil on board. Framed.

Work on wood This abstract work is distinguished by its dynamic curves and vivid colors. Dominated by shades of red, blue and green, it evokes a fluid dance of organic forms. The sin...