20th Century Abstract Paintings

Artist: Elisabeth Hahn (German 1924-2021), Elisabeth Hahn was born in Dortmund, Germany, where she began her artistic studies. In 1953, she moved to Paris. She continued her studie...

Nicely painted mid century abstract oil painting by Ken Munowitz. Oil on canvas. Framed.

George Dannatt (1915-2009) Miniature White Painting (on red background) 1972/1992 Oil on paper, then mixed media Image: 3 1/8 x 7 ¼” 8.00 x 18.4 cm Frame: 9 x 13” ...

Ethel Rosetta Davis was born in Hardin County, Tennessee in 1897. She studied art in Birmingham, Alabama. Davis married and located to Tuscumbia a...

Abstract of shapes and lines etched into green acrylic and highlighted with hues of yellow, pink and orange by A. Vivent, 1993. Signed and date lower right. Original artwork on pape...

CRIMSON CONVERSATION Size: 51 x 64 cm (including frame) Oil and gouache on board A bold and expressive mid-century modernist figurative composition, painted in oil and gouache onto ...

"de Kus" (The Kiss) Abstract Monotype in Ink on Paper Bright and bold abstract monotype by Dutch-American artist Anouk Johanna (b. 1946). Two abstracted human-like dark grey shapes are mirror images of each other, surrounded in a multicolored background. The background has a textured look, with blended variations in shades of yellow, green, teal, and magenta. Signed and dated "Anouk Johanna '93" in the lower right corner. Numbered "1/1" in the lower left corner. Titled "de Kus" in the lower middle. Presented in a wood frame and an off-white mat. Frame size: 17.5"H x 15.75"W Image size: 9.25"H x 7.75"W Anouk Johanna (Dutch, b. 1946) grew up in Amsterdam Holland and already knew as a young child she was going to be an artist. In Amsterdam she was exposed to world class art and early on she showed signs of a multitude of talents in visual as well as performing arts. Her parents fully supported and encouraged her. She studied drama as well as costume and textile design and was part of a traveling theater group before she started studying sculpture at the prestigious Rietveld Akademie. In 1969 she was offered an opportunity to travel to the USA to study sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in Brooklyn, New York. There she met and married an American sculptor. They traveled and lived all over the US and in Holland and had two daughters. In Amsterdam they bought an old sailboat where they lived a romantic life as true bohemian artists and made art even when the children were very small. In 1971 they moved back to New York City and Johanna created large fiber art wall hangings for several years. In 1975 her husband and she, now living in L.A., learned to be silversmiths and started selling their jewelry at Arts and Crafts Fairs. This was a more lucrative way to raise a family than as sculptors. It was at the Californian Art Fairs that they were first introduced to the art of "scrimshaw" (engraving and inking of images on ivory or bone) and began to create their own scrimshaw pieces happy to be able to combine sculpture and drawing skills. In 1980, after a divorce, Johanna settled with her daughters in Santa Cruz, CA where she started taking classes at Cabrillo College and studied painting, drawing, jewelry, printmaking and art history while continuing to sell her scrimshaw jewelry...

Metchiled Naviasky Refugee from Europe who studied art in England. During the war she became picture editor of famous magazine PIcture Post. Later she taught mysticism in art at t...

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Naval Occurrence, c. 1963 oil on canvas signed and titled verso 24 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...

This is a contemporary abstract watercolor painting by artist David Ruth. This series of paintings often feature bright colors and vibrant layouts that draw the viewer in. They are c...

Sonia Gechtoff Portico I, 1979 Signed, dated, and inscribed Acrylic and pencil on paper 40 x 40 inches Sonia Gechtoff was born in Philadelphia to Ethel "Etya" and Leonid Gechtoff. ...

Abstract Geometric Composition in White, Red and Blue Original Acrylic on Board Bold abstract composition by Robert William Hinds (American, b. 1926). This composition is brushed wh...

Two Strips Down is an orginal contemporary artwork realized in 1974. Acrylic on canvas. Hand signed, titled, dated on the back. Includes frame.

Antique American modernist seascape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Measuring 18 by 24 inches.

Rene Beckley. City Streets, 1965. Oil on artist board, 16 x 20 inches; 18 x 22 inches framed. Signed and dated lower right.

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of American abstract painters that radically defined abstraction and...

French School, circa 1970's Cubist composition oil on board, unframed board: 29 x 24 inches provenance: private collection, France condition: very good and sound condition

André Verdet ( 1913 - 2004 ) . Artiste français né à Nice (alpes maritimes ) mort à Saint Paul de Vence . poète , peintre , sculpteur , céramiste , mus...

Artist/ School: French School, c. 1960's Title: Figurative Study Medium: oil on canvas, unframed Canvas: 36 x 25.5 inches Provenance: private collection, France Condition: The ...

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...

When Red Meets Yellow - Original Abstract In the Style of Diebenkorn and Rothko Substantial abstract expressionist oil painting depicting the conjoining of red and yellow by America...

Stanley Boxer devoted nearly five decades to the development of an expressive, abstract practice, encompassing drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. “In the manufacture of my art, I u...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) watercolour painting on board unframed: 17 x 12 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we have f...

Terence La Noue was born in Hammond, Indiana in 1941. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1964. After going to Berlin as a Fulbright Meister Student ...

Abstract Composition French School, circa 1970's indistinctly signed and dated oil painting on board, unframed size: 21 x 25.5 inches condition: overall good and sound provenance: fr...

Tristan Fabris, 1980’s French Surrealist painter Abstract Surrealist Figurative nude work oil on canvas, unframed painting: 26 x 32 inches private collection, France The painting is...

Antique American modernist flower still life oil painting by Samuel Brecher (1897 - 1982). Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 28 by 30 inches overall and 22 by 24 inches painti...

Large scale abstract painting of another abstract painting on artist's easel by California artist D. Silver (American, 20th Century), 1984. Signed and dated lower right corner and on...

French artist, last quarter 20th century signed Billant oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 38 x 51 inches provenance: private collection, Paris The painting is in very good and present...

Composition is a beautiful original painting in tempera applied on cream-colored paper, realized at the beginning of XX century by the Greek-French artist Mathéos Alkis, Signed on lo...

Really impressive early American modernist painting. Oil on board. Framed.

Antique American exhibited cubist nude portrait oil painting. Oil and casein on board. Framed. Signed. Exhibition label verso.

Artist: Thom Cooney-Crawford, American (1944 - ) Title: Embrace Year: 1989 Medium: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper, signed Size: 30 in. x 23 in. (76.2 cm x 58.42 cm) Frame Size: 40 ...

David Rankin is a New York-based, British-born Australian post-war and contemporary artist known for his expressionistic abstract paintings. His work can be categorized by his use of...

Lyman Kipp Minimalist painting on paper, 1970 ink roller and oil paint on paper Signed and dated by the artist on the front Accompanied by gallery i...

Impactful abstract monotype of abstract figures in black over a bright orange background, circa 1960. Signed lower right. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a g...

"Picos" is an abstract painting created in 1971 by Modernist artist, Stanley Bate. The piece features an earthy, muted palette, giving it a serene feeling with deep grey, muted brown...

Artist/ School: French School, signed and dated Title: Kissing Couple, beautfiful Modernist work with green, beige, brown, yellow, golden colors. Med...

Artist/ School: Jill Jackson (British, contemporary) Title: shapes Medium: oil on board, unframed Board: 12 x 10 inches Provenance: private collection, England Condition: The p...

Title: French Impressionist Still Life of Yellow and Red Roses in Copper Vase By Fanch Lel Signed: Yes Size: 16.25 x 13 inches (height x width) Oil painting on board, unframed Condit...

Antique American impressionist lake landscape signed oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Image size, 20L x 16H.

Mortimer Borne, Printmaker, painter, sculptor, and educator was born in Rypin, Poland in 1902 and emigrated to the US in 1916. He studied at the National Academy of Design, The Art Students League, The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and with Charles Webster Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown. Painted in a thick impasto style similar in technique to Samuel Rothbort and David Burliuk. Borne himself taught at The New School for Social Research in New York City from 1945-1967. From the 1920s through the 40s he was a prolific producer of New York City cityscapes and genre scenes. In later decades, he adopted a more modernist style apparently influenced by Picasso, producing color drypoints of abstracted figures. His works were widely exhibited in museums in the U.S. and abroad from 1931 and later, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Carnegie Institute, and Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in London. He taught at The New School for Social Research in New York City from 1945-1967, and at the Tappan Zee...

Title: Abstract Pastel Regatta Scene with Sailboats on Calm Water By Fanch Lel Signed: Yes Size: 13 x 16.25 inches (height x width) Oil painting on board, unframed Condition: The pa...

French School signed and dated verso oil painting on canvas, unframed painting: 9.5 x 13 inches condition: overall very good

Impressive early American modernist landscape painting. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Framed. Signed. Image size, 14 by 18 inches.

"V" - Original Pop Art Original pop art "V" by Robert Wilham Hends. A white background with a small blue triangle in the top center, with a larger red "V" taking up the majority of ...

Andy Warhol Gouache on Interview Magazine Back Page 1989 Modernism Portrait of Andy Worhol on Andy Worhol's Interview Magazine back page and painted over in Gouache by Ricardo (Richa...

"Mesa World" abstract acrylic on canvas painting of horses by artist Jean Richardson. Signed Richardson lower right recto. "Mesa World", 40 x 60, JR 917, 1987 written on back.

Patricia Zippin Tillamook Flight 5 of 12 1980s Mixed Media 30.5"x 22.5", unframed Signed in paint on bottom right and signed and titled on reverse in pen Patricia Jayne Zippin (1930...

Artist: Elisabeth Hahn (German 1924-2021), Elisabeth Hahn was born in Dortmund, Germany, where she began her artistic studies. In 1953, she moved to Paris. She continued her studie...

Abstract Expressionist Composition by Jacques COULAIS (1955-2011) gouache painting on paper/ card unframed: 10.75 x 8.5 inches condition: excellent provenance: all the paintings we h...

Artist/ School: French Fauvist school, 20th century Title: figures in colorful street scene Medium: oil painting on canvas, unframed canvas: 24 x 20...

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

Antique American modernist abstract landscape painting by Ann Anderson. Oil on canvas, circa 1961. Signed. Displayed in a period modern frame. Image, 16"L x 20"H.

Antique modernist signed pointillist painting. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Signed. Framed. Rare early work!

This stunning Scottish Abstract oil painting is by much noted artist William Gear. It was painted in 1949, not long after Gear de mobbed in 1947, moved to Paris and established a one room studio at 13 Quai des Grands Augustins, hence the title Interieur, Forme Blanche. At the same time, Gear was introduced to CoBrA, allowing him to exhibit in important early CoBrA shows in Copenhagen and in Amsterdam in 1949. The same year saw an exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, alongside Jackson Pollock. Gear remained in Paris until the early fifties. This bold abstract mixes blocks of solid colour with more geometric lines and is an excellent and important example of his period in Paris. Signed and dated '49 lower left. Provenance: Private London collection. Condition. Oil on canvas, 24 inches by 20 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed in a wooded white painted frame, 34 inches by 30 inches and in good condition. Few British painters have played an active role in the modern abstract movement of post-war Europe. William Gear was the most passionate and committed exception. He continued the tradition of the Edinburgh-Paris axis established by J.D. Fergusson, Samuel Peploe and others, spending vital years between 1947 and 1950 living and working in Paris. Significantly, in recent years, he received the greatest acclaim in France, Germany and the Netherlands. He was born in 1915 in Methil, Fife, into a mining family; the particular landscape of "pitheads, the sea, rocks, castles, trees, storms and poverty" marked his earliest identity with a place and probably remained the most influential to his art. Years later he recalled as a schoolboy visiting the local art gallery in Kirkcaldy and seeing 12 colourful still-lifes by Peploe. Art-history lessons during student years at Edinburgh College of Art, in particular Byzantine classes under David Talbot Rice, also influenced his concern for structure. This had as much to do with the formal language of painting as sheer delight in the medium itself. Gear never missed an opportunity to show people the merits of a well-constructed painting. On a travelling scholarship in 1937, he chose to study with Fernand Leger, described by Gear as "a keystone for me, seldom abstract, rather a degree of abstraction". The Second World War interrupted these formative years and, by 1940, Gear had joined the Royal Corps of Signals. Dispatched to the Middle East, he still had the discipline to paint - mostly works on paper of damaged landscapes - with exhibitions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Cairo as well as Siena and Florence. His naturally robust and tenacious temperament was profoundly affected by visiting Bergen-Belsen, and this certainly influenced the later experiments with the black armature. As the British officer in Celle, working for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Control Commission, he focused on securing the safety of the Berlin Art Collection in Schloss Celle, and organised an important series of modern art exhibitions, including the rejected work of Karl Otto Gotz...

"A dynamic dance of curves and warm tones, capturing the quiet vitality of mid-century French abstraction." Pierre Coquet (1926–2021) Abstract Composition Oil on canvas, 38 x 55 x 2...

Signed lower right, 'R. Hornak' for Rosemary Hornak (American, born 1951); additionally signed verso, titled 'Perroquets Impasto, Variation 2' and dated 1992. Rosemary Hornak received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 1978. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and juried awards and has exhibited widely and with success, both at solo and group exhibitions including at Swann Galleries in Detroit and at the Macomb Center. Raised in an artistic family, Rosemary Hornak is the sister of the hyper-realist painter, Ian Hornak. Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2004 Eric I. Spoutz Gallery, Fisher Building...