Philippe Visson

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, Modernist Painting

1987

Philippe Visson, (1942-2008), whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of La Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1930 to 1960, and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major political journalist for The Washington Post and Roving Editor for The Reader’s Digest. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. At the Vissons, one devours; one spends beyond one’s means; one falls, but only to land on one’s feet. Visson is a painter to whom it is difficult to assign a particular movement in art history; and that, principally for two reasons: firstly, his origins,his education and his way of life have produced a personality without any true roots, but rather a citizen of the world, who carries with him all cultures, from pre-Revolutionary Russia to the black ghetto of Washington, D.C. Secondly, he is self-taught, and can work in complete solitude, as well as before a large audience. His art is therefore uniquely his own, and certainly not that of an Art Brut ‘author’. His faces, his anti-portraits, reveal a continuum of humanity’s facets: from Christ to the demon, from the child to the aged, from the Caucasion to the African. Biography Philippe Visson, whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of “The Gazette des Beaux-Arts” and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major American political journalist for “The Washington Post” and “The Readers Digest”. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. He starts to paint in the bathroom of Parisian luxury hotel at the age of 16, working in a frenzy and without art lessons. He’s immediately confronted with the scrutiny of professional experts that surround his parents. He has instant success when he shows at the Craven Gallery in Paris in December, 1958, quickly offered to him; then in New York in the Milch Galleries in May, 1959; followed by shows in Monte Carlo, Geneva and New York again. It was too much, too soon. Visson falls into drinking. Returning to Washington, D.C. on 1960, the period 1963-1979 is differentiated by a life that is sometimes social, sometimes reclusive, which continues when his family settles in a large villa in Switzerland (Epalinges above Lausanne) in the mid-sixties. Visson has stopped drinking. He paints in one of the rooms of his parents’ house and inundates all the empty rooms with his productions that remain hidden from the public, allowing them to be seen only by personalities such as Marcel Brion and René Huyghe, both of the Académie Française; or Jean Leymarie, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It’s only at the start of the seventies that he once again opens his work to the public. He meets several important cultural figures of the time, such as René Berger, Director of the State Fine Arts Museum of Lausanne; and Michel Thévoz, future Director of the Art brut Museum. After the death of his father in 1973, he settles without money with his mother in a luxury hotel in Paris. It’s only after a year and a half of perpetual and colorful adventures that they return to Washington, D.C., where he resumes painting and produces a unique period of abstracts. Returning to Switzerland at the death of his mother in the beginning of the eighties, Visson meets with blatant success in Switzerland, where institutions exhibit and purchase his paintings (Aarau State Fine Arts Museum, the Federal Office of Culture in Bern). His fury for painting takes the form of an explosion while remaining focused (he always keeps what he considers the best paintings for himself). After the life of a hermit in the Paccots, Visson comes down from his mountain to settle in Montreux on the Swiss Riveria. This moving is marked by a sort of return to social life, despite the fact that he paints in a cellar. A period of public projects with charitable goals is launched. Visson thrives on this contact with the public. This changes somewhat when he receives a working studio in The Montreux Palace in the late nineties. This emerging from the cellars denotes a new era for the artist. He starts an intense period of painting, and moves six thousand of his paintings to the Palace. He continues his public projects, including the acquisition against paintings of a Stradivarius violin...

Alexander Raymond Katz (Hungarian-American, 1895-1974) initialed l.r. "A.R.K." inscribed verso "Prayer Tree", A Raymond Katz." Sight size: 39-3/4"h x 30"w Overall: 40-3/4"h x 30-3/4"w This is done in an Abstract Expressionist style with bold enamel like paint and applied ceramic or glass iridescent mosaic tiles. Alexander Raymond Katz, Hungarian / American (1895 – 1974) Alexander Raymond Katz was born in Kassa, Hungary, and came to the United States in 1909. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1920s, he worked as a director of the Poster Department at Paramount Studios. He was appointed the Director of Posters for the Chicago Civic Opera in 1930. A WPA muralist, illustrator and modernist painter especially known for paintings with Jewish themes and narrative American scene works. Many notable Jewish artists worked for the WPA amongst them Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Aaron Bohrod and many more. During the Great Depression, notable architect Frank Lloyd Wright urged Katz to become a muralist. In 1933, he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago. In 1936, he painted the mural History of the Immigrant for the Madison, Ill., post office. Katz’s works were included in various exhibitions and now are part of several museum collections, including those of the Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Jewish Museum, New York. His murals, bas-reliefs and stained glass designs adorn more than 200 Jewish synagogues in the United States. Katz and other Jewish artists in Chicago who expressed Jewish and Biblical themes were inspired by the artist Abel Pann (1883-1963). Pann, who is regarded as the leading painter of the Land of Israel, exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago in 1920. Early in his career, Katz began to explore the artistic possibilities inherent in the characters of the Hebrew alphabet. He developed aesthetic and philosophical interpretations of each letter and became the leading innovator and pioneer in the field of Hebraic art. Katz applies this concept in the woodcut Moses and the Burning Bush. Hebrew letters appears in Moses’ head, his cane and inside the flame. The initial of Moses’ name crowns his head. The letter in the flame is the first letter of the name of God. A combination of images and Hebrew letters appeared commonly in illustrations of the scene Moses and the Burning Bush in the Haggadah, the book of Passover. The symbolism of the burning bush corresponds to the motifs of A Gift to Biro-Bidjan. Among the fourteen participating artists were notable Chicago modernists Todros Geller, Mitchell Siporin, A. Raymond Katz, David Bekker...

PATRICK ARCHER (American b. 1926) Signed and dated at lower right, signed and titled on label verso. Abstract landscape with vibrant dayglo fluorescent colors Palm Beach Florida artist Patrick Archer (b. 1926). Archer studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts (MFA) Archer has exhibited widely including recent exhibitions at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, the Boca Raton Museum, and the Merrill Lynch Gallery in New York. Archer's work is in the collections of the Albright Knox Gallery (a work similar to the one offered here), Vero Beach Museum of Art, the Silvermine Guild, and the Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach. Taught Painting, Drawing, Design, Architecture, History & Appreciation, and introduced a concentrated program in Color and Theory (under the advisory-guidance of Faber Birren.) Worked directly with Reuben Hale, Jim Houser, Pat Slattery, Gene Arant, Richard Frank...

This is a large mixed media abstract painting with stencilled letters in a sans serif typeface in blue and red. it is in the manner of James Coignard but does not appear to be signed...

David Hare Summer Land, 1970 Acrylic or oil paint and collage on board Dimensions: 26 X 36 inches. Framed measuring 29 x 38 inches. Hand signed, dated and titled on tape to verso 'Summer Land 1970 Hare'. Provenance: Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York David Hare (1917 – 1992) was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and oil painting. The VVV Surrealism Magazine was first published and edited by Hare in 1942. Born March 10, 1917 in New York City, New York to father Meredith Hare, a lawyer and mother Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector. In the 1920s the family moved first to Santa Fe, New Mexico and later to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in hope that the fresh air would help heal Meredith Hare's tuberculosis. His mother founded the Fountain Valley School, where David attended high school. After high school Hare married and moved to Roxbury, Connecticut where he worked as a color photographer. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson from 1936 to 1937, studying biology and chemistry. In the late 1930s, with no previous artistic training, he began to experiment with color photography. Using his previous education in chemistry Hare developed an automatist technique called "heatage" in which he heated the unfixed negative from an 8 by 10-inch plate, causing the image to ripple and distort. Hare's Surrealist experiments in photography were only one of his many projects. In 1938 he met Susanna Winslow Wilson and the couple soon married. Both David and Susanna pursued their interests in Surrealism and regularly attended Surrealist gatherings in New York Larre French restaurant on 56th street and at Breton's Greenwich Village apartment. In 1940 he received a commission from the American Museum of Natural History to document the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, for which he eventually produced 20 prints developed using Eastman Kodak's then-new dye transfer process (a time-consuming and complicated technique). In the same year, he also opened his own commercial photography studio in New York City and exhibited his photographs in a solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery. In the next few years, through his cousin the painter Kay Sage, he came into contact with a number of Surrealist artists who had fled their native Europe because of World War II. Hare became closely involved with the émigré Surrealist movement and collaborated closely with them on projects such as the Surrealist journal VVV, which he co founded and edited from 1941 to 1944 with André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. With numerous illustrations by Breton, Leonora Carrington, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Giorgio de Chirico, MarcelDuchamp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Enrico Donati, Dorothea Tanning, and others. Published in only four issues between 1942-44, VVV was an experimental New York-based magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism. Edited by David Hare, the short-lived magazine featured contributions from some of the leading avant-garde artists of the period. David and Susanna divorce in 1945 and Breton’s wife Jacqueline Lamba...

In this painting the artist Larry Abramson depicts an abstract landscape with a high degree of simplification, taking references from the stylistic conventions of conceptual and minimalistic neo avant-garde art movements. Here, the artist applies thick layers of paint allowing for a textural feeling on the surface of the canvas. LARRY ABRAMSON South Africa, b. 1954 Larry Abramson is a South African-born Israeli artist. Born in 1954, Abramson and his family immigrated to Jerusalem in 1961. Shortly after graduating high school, Abramson entered London's Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1973 where he studied a Foundation Course. In 1975, he held his first solo exhibition. Abramson continued to develop his style, combining abstraction and figurative art to create dynamic situations. Upon returning to Israel, he worked as a printer and curator of exhibitions at the Jerusalem Print Workshop until 1986. In 1984, he joined the teaching staff of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and, in 1992, was appointed head of the Fine Art department. In 1996, he founded and headed the Bezalel Program for Young Artists, the first Master of Fine Arts program in Israel. He served as a guest lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000 and 2003. In 2002, Abramson continued to be a leader in art academia by planning the establishment of a new art department at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is a founding member of Artists Without Walls, a dialogue group of Israeli and Palestinian artists. Throughout his career as an artist, Abramson has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Jacques Ohana Prize, The Minister of Education Culture Prize, and the Mendel and Eva Pundik Prize for Israeli Art. He has shown at prestigious group and solo exhibitions around the world and, in recent years, held two special museum projects, "Searching for the Ideal City" at the Magnes Museum, Berkeley (2005), and "Mini Israel" at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2006). Larry Abramson was born in Durban, South Africa. In 1961, he immigrated to Israel with his family and settled in Jerusalem. He studied art with Yona Mach at the Hebrew University High School and devoted much time to painting. In 1970, he signed the High School Seniors Letter protesting the Israel government's foot-dragging on the subject of peace. In the early 1970s, Abramson studied art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and moved to London to continue his art studies, but only remained there for one year. In 1975, he began to work in printmaking. He became an instructor and curator at the Jerusalem Print Workshop and began exhibiting in Jerusalem galleries. In 1984, he began to teach at Bezalel. His work in the 1970s and 80s quoted from art history as a tool for critical reflections on art. This was particularly evident in "Anatomical Painting" (1980-1983), "Nevo" (1984-1986) and "Column" (1988). In 1992, he was elected chairman of the Fine Arts Department of Bezalel. In 1996, he received his professorship. In 1995, he showed his series, Tsooba, which explored the politics of Israeli landscape and aroused great public debate. From the 1990s, he published many essays on the link between art history and the political and social significance of art. Major works from this period include "The Return of the Black Square" and a series of drawings, "The Pile" (2002-2004). Education 1972 Art History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 1973 Chelsea School of Art, London, UK 1971 Hebrew University High School, Jerusalem, art with Yona Mach Teaching 1984-92 Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem 1992-96 Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem,Head of Fine Arts Department, 1992-96 Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Head of Young Artists Program, 2000-03 San Francisco Art Institute, California, USA, Guest Lecturer, 2002 onwards Shenkar College, Ramat Gan, Professor of Art, Multidisciplinary Art Department, Awards And Prizes 1978 Beatrice Kolliner Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1988 The America-Israel Cultural Fund Scholarship 1991 Jacques and Eugenie Ohana Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv 1993 The America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Sharett Fund Scholarship for a Young Artist 1998 Prize, Ministry of Education and Culture 2007 The Mendel and Eva Pundik Foundation Prize for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv Abramson, Larry Avigdor Arikha, Dei Ben Shaul, David Michail Grobman, Michael Gross, Uri Lifschitz, Ofer Lellouche, Menashe Kadishman, Shaul Schatz and others Sarig - in Israeli Paintings Israel Pollak School of Art Kalisher Five, Art Sc, Tel Aviv Abramson, Larry Menashe Kadishman, Pinchas Cohen Gan, David Reeb, Arnon Ben David...

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