1940s Abstract Paintings

This evocative 1946 oil on canvas painting, titled Deserted Street, was created by Colorado/Woodstock modernist Jenne Magafan (1916–1952). The work depicts a solitary figure wanderin...

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...

Original watercolor on paper. Hand signed and dated lower right by Rolph Scarlett. Artwork size 7.5 x 9.5 inches. Frame size 17.5 x 21.5 inches. Artwork is in excellent conditio...

Gouache on paper, 18 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Signed (at lower right): Morris; (with monogram, on the back): GLKM [monogram] / 1932 [sic] Executed circa late 1940s A passionate advocate of abstract art during the 1930s and 1940s, George L. K. Morris was active as a painter, sculptor, editor, and critic. An erudite man with an internationalist point of view, Morris eschewed the social, political, and figural concerns that preoccupied so many artists of Depression-era America, believing that painters should focus their attention on the beauty, refinement, and simplicity of pure form instead. His goal, he said, was “to wedge the expression further and further into the confines of the canvas until every shape takes on a spatial meaning” (as quoted in Ward Jackson, “George L. K. Morris: Forty Years of Abstract Art,” Art Journal 32 [Winter 1972–73], p. 150). Born into an affluent family in New York City, Morris was a descendent of General Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. From 1918 until 1924, he attended the Groton School in Connecticut, studying classics and art. He continued to focus on literature and art while attending Yale University (1924–28), an experience that prepared him well for his future activity as an artist-critic. After graduating in 1928, Morris studied at the Art Students League of New York, working under the realist painters John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller, as well as Jan Matulka, the only modernist on the faculty. In the spring of 1929, Morris traveled to Paris with Albert E. Gallatin, a family friend and fellow painter who introduced him to leading members of the Parisian avant-garde, including Jean Arp, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Hélion, and Piet Mondrian. Morris also took classes at the Académie Moderne, studying under Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, important exponents of Synthetic Cubism who influenced his aesthetic development. Indeed, after experimenting with the simplified forms of Modernism for a few years, Morris moved on to abstraction by 1934, adopting a hard-edged, geometric approach inspired by Leger’s cubist style and the biomorphic shapes of Arp and Joan Miró. Following his return to New York in 1930, Morris built a white-walled, open-spaced studio (inspired by that of Ozenfant, which had been designed by Le Corbusier) on the grounds of Brockhurst, his parents’ 46-acre estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1935, he married the painter and collagist Estelle “Suzy...

Pieter de Haard (Rotterdam 1914-2000)

Byron Browne was an important American modernist painter. Ink, tempera, and crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right.

Signed Lower Right Bror Julius Olsson “B.J.O.” Nordfeldt (1878 - 1955) Bror Julius Olsson was born in Tullstrop, Sweden in 1878. He immigrated to the United States in 1891, later adopting his mother’s maiden name of Nordfeldt. Beginning his art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago where he was chosen to assist fellow artist, Albert Herter, with a large mural project for the McCormick Harvester Company. In 1900, he was sent to Paris by McCormick to help set up the completed mural at the Paris Exposition. While there, he studied briefly at the Academie Julian before traveling to England to study woodblock printmaking under F. Morley Fletcher. Returning to Chicago in 1903, Nordfeldt would spend the next ten years painting mainly figurative works in an academic style similar to that of the Old Masters. By the mid-teens he had developed a bold dramatic modernist style and divided his time between New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, he invented the “Provincetown Print...

In Byron Browne's "The Night Journey", 1947, Picasso meets Jackson Pollock. Brown strikes a balance between fanciful representation and gestural abstrac...

Eugene Camille Fitsch Am./Fr., 1892-1972 - Signed lower right. Framed dimensions 20 3/4" x 34 7/8" framed Provenance: Studio of the Artist to Private Collection Boston, Massachuse...

Exhibited: The North Carolina Museum of Art , October, 1967 Exhibited: November 5th to December 4, 1977 Titled: Study for Gomorrah, 1944 His work is in the collections of: Philli...

Answer the Call, 1954 Gouache on board 31 × 24 in 78.7 × 61 cm Joseph Binder was an Austrian-born designer whose influence permeated Europe and the United States. He applied reductiv...

Nordfeldt's misty and moody monochromatic modernist landscape is reminiscent of Marsden Hartley. Signed lower right. The plaque reads B.J.O Nordfeldt "Moon in Mist - The painting l...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Charles Frederick Ramsey (1875 - 1951) Charles Frederick Ramsey is considered as important a leader among the New Hope Modernists, as Lathrop among the New Hope Impressionists. Ramsey, the son of prominent Philadelphia artist, Milne Ramsey...

An intriguing and complex composition composed of guns, rifles, ammo and a bullseye. Work is housed in a rustic Heydenryk frame.

Complex and masterfully thought out the composition of rifle, gun shells, target shapes, and buck shots. Most likely done for a ad or men's magazine. Signed lower right Atherton. Housed in a rustic House of Heydenryk frame...

Belgian artist Miette Braive(1916-2000), was classically trained in Belgium, before moving to Paris to pursue her art career as first a student and then a contemporary of the famed F...

“Composition” is a oil on canvas painting by Modern artist Benjamin Benno, American (1901 - 1980). By the early 1930s he had established a reputation as a member of the international...

Abstract geometric drawing by early Houston. TX artist Robert Preusser. The work features bursts of lines and colors that create movement throughout the composition. Signed and date...

An energetic cubist painting composed in a configuration similar to a traditional still life. This painting bears the signature of the artist and uses a multitude of colors in flat washes to invoke a fractured image. Cubist Still...

Completed when the artist was only 25, this painting references a fight between two mythological figures. Commonly called Furies, the Erinyes or Eumenides were Greek goddesses of ven...

Presenting for the first time in decades, an exceptional geometric abstract oil painting by American artist Philip Pinner, 1910-1977. Equilateral Varia...

Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...

An original mid centuiry oil on panel by American artist Robert McIntosh, "The Aquarium", is an original oil on panel, signed, c.1950.

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

Presenting an exceptional American modernist figurative/abstract painting by American artist Zulma Steele Parker. Boudoir;, is an original oil on canvas,...

Belgian artist Miette Braive(1916-2000), was classically trained in Belgium, before moving to Paris to pursue her art career as first a student and then a contemporary of the famed F...

Presenting an exceptional mixed media watercolor by Hungarian/American artist Jules Engel. Engel worked and exhibited extensively and gained notoriety as an exceptionally prolific...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member of the Art Students League. "The Critic...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

American artist Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La Grande Academie Chaumiere in Paris, 1932, before moving to New York where he became a National Academy artist and a member ...

Belgian artist Miette Braive(1916-2000), was classically trained in Belgium, before moving to Paris to pursue her art career as first a student and then a contemporary of the famed F...

Presenting exceptional mixed media watercolor by Austrian/American artist Franz Bergmann. Bergmann studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, before settling in Northern Calif...

Jirayr Zorthian(1911-2004), went through two Turkish massacres before age eight. He left Turkey at age nine with his family and spent a year in Padua, Italy, waiting for his visa to...

An original mid century oil on panel by American artsist Robert McItosh. "Abstract 1", is an original oil on panel, signed, c.1950, with an image dimensi...

Belgian artist Miette Braive(1916-2000), was classically trained in Belgium, before moving to Paris to pursue her art career as first a student and then a contemporary of the French artist/author Andre’ Lhote. She arrived in Paris in the mid-late 1940’s and began a career as a modern artist working and exhibiting with Andre’ Lhote over the next two decades. Braive was a woman of small stature, and when Lhote met her he nicknamed her, “Miette”�, as she was small like a “Crumb”� of bread. Born Emilie Braive, once nicknamed by Lhote, she worked and signed all of her work as, M. Braive. The influence of Andre’ Lhote is evident within the paintings by Miette Braive. Bold and vivid pallets, with subjects ranging from pure non objective abstracts, to full modernist/cubist abstract figures. "Figure Abstract...