Ramon Prats

Abstract Expressionist Latin American Painting

David Rankin, American (b. 1946) Rocky Hillside, (1990) Oil on paper Hand signed lower right, signed and titled verso. 30 x 22 1/2 inches 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 quick, loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of scribbles on a page. Rankin works predominantly in oil painting and acrylic on canvas, but also works with paper, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities across the world, including New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Mexico, Vienna, Berlin and Cologne, as well as all over Australia. Represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections and museums, David Rankin’s work is featured in Australia’s leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. David Rankin was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in 1946 then emigrated to Australia with his family in 1948. He spent his childhood in the 1950s in the semi-rural Port Hacking region South of Sydney and his teenage years in country New South Wales, from Hay, Wagga Wagga and Albury in the South to Bourke and Brewarrina in the North. Rankin is self-taught, developing his techniques and ideas in the outback towns of his youth. He was inspired by the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Klee as well as being influenced by the history of Buddhism and Asian art. In his travels before he arrived in Sydney in 1967 he developed a concept of what he wanted to achieve as an Australian artist. His dream was to express the anima, the life spirit or the essence of God in all nature. As an Australian artist he believed could bring the elements of Western Art together with an understanding and love for the cultures of Asia and the Australian Aborigine. He also felt that as Australia was closer to Asia than Europe it made sense to think about the art of Indian, Chinese and Japanese artists, and that one could not be an authentic articulate Australian artist without a love and respect for the artistic and spiritual expressions of the various Aboriginal artists, peoples and cultures. His work combined elements of Abstract Expressionist painting with Jewish and Aboriginal influences. In 1979 his first wife, Jennifer Mary Roberts (née Haynes) died. Rankin subsequently met his current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parents being survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife's death fused into what he calls "the dark blessing of my life." The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted judaica imagery, Black...

Sergio de Castro (15 September 1922 – 31 December 2012) was a French-Argentinian Sergio de Castro was born in Argentina, in an aristocratic family of Spanish origins (Galicia and the Basque Country), the House of Castro. His father was a diplomat, which is why, from 1923 until 1932, Castro lived in Switzerland with his parents and his two sisters. During these years he visited cities like Lausanne, Geneva and Turin. In 1933 he entered a Jesuit school in Montevideo and he started studying music. He discovered poetry by learning to speak and write in Spanish. He was specially touched by the works of César Vallejo. Through the years Castro would become close friends with writers like Octavio Paz, Julio Cortázar, Samuel Beckett, Kostas Papaioannou and Georges Schéhadé. Later, during a trip to Uruguay, he met Joaquín Torres García, with whom he studied painting and monumental art from 1941 until 1949. In 1942 he moved to Argentina, where he would live until 1949. Castro was also friends with other artists like Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes. In 1945 he found a job as a secretary in the Astronomy Observatorium of the city of Córdoba, where we also worked as the assistant to the musician Manuel de Falla in Alta Gracia, until his death in 1946. In 1945 and 1946 he had a grant from the French government to study musical composition. During the year of 1946 he had an exhibition in New York City among other members of Torres Garcia's workshop. That same year he traveled to the northeast of Argentina and the south of Perú to study pre-columbian art with Gonzalo Fonseca, Julio Uruguay Alpuy and Jonio Montiel. In 1949 he started teaching History of Music in the new music school of the city of La Plata. His work as a musician drew attention from relevant figures such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Aaron Copland and Juan José Castro. He quit this job when he got a grant from the French government to improve his musical studies in Paris, where he settled in November 1949. Since 1951 he devoted himself exclusively to painting. In 1955, his friend the German writer and translator Edith Aron introduced him to Julio Cortázar, who would become a close friend of him. Castro inspired the character of Etienne in Cortázar's novel Rayuela (Hopscotch). In the book is featured the intimate friendship of the protagonist, Horacio Oliveira, with his companion in the Serpent Club, whom he often visited in his studio in Paris. In 1960 he won the Hallmark Prize in New York. In 1979 he obtained the French nationality. In 1980 he showed his works at the Argentinian pavilion in the 39th Venice Biennale. He was associate professor in the Human Sciences Faculty of the University of Strasbourg from 1981 until 1986. In 1997 he became Officer in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2006, Sergio de Castro made a 220-work donation to the Fine Arts Museum of Saint-Lô. He was also a close friend of the musician Alberto Ginastera, who made reference to Sergio de Castro and his first works in his notes on modern Argentinian music. Castro died 31 December 2012 in Paris. He is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, in Paris, close to his dear friend Samuel Beckett. Monumental works Two wall paintings for the Martirené Pavilion of the Hospital Saint-Bois (1942), in Montevideo (Uruguay), in collaboration with Joaquín Torres García and his disciples, among which Castro was the youngest. The Creation of the Universe (1956–1958), 6m x 20m stained-glass window. Castro worked with painter and glass-maker J. J. K. Ray (1898–1979) in Paris. Selected Exhibitions 1952 Galerie Jeanne Castel Paris 1954 Galería Bonino Buenos Aires and Galerie Pierre Loeb, Paris 1956 Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris 1958 Matthiesen Gallery, London 1959 documenta 2 Kunst nach 1945 Kassel 1961 Matthiesen Gallery, London 1963–64 Galeria Lorenzelli, Bergamo and Milano 1964 Galería Bettie Thommen, Basel 1965 Kunstverein Hamburg Retrospektive 1966 Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland (retrospective) 1966 Recklinhausen, Variationen über ein Thema, Städtische Kunsthalle 1970 Retrospektiven in Oslo, Kunstforering, and Kunst Industriemuseet, Copenhagen, Kunstforening, Oslo, Kunstforening, Holstebro 1972 Wildenstein Gallery, London Landscapes of Light 1974 Galerie Jacob, Paris 1975 Kunsthalle Bremen, Retrospektive, Berlin Tempelhof, Kunstamt (Berlin Festival) 1975–76 Retrospective exhibition the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen (68 artworks from 1956 to 1966), France 1979 Hommage à Pierre Loeb, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 1980 39th Venice Biennale 1987 French Institute London. Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires 1988 Galerie des Ambassades y Galerie Galarte, Sergio de Castro, Natures Mortes, 1958–1965. Paris/ Bayeux, Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art 1989 Galerie des Ambassades, Paris 1991–92 Romont, Swiss Stained Glass...

Nachume Miller (1949–1998) was a German born Israeli artist who immigrated to New York City in 1973, where he made a name for himself in the American Modern Art scene. Miller immigrated to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts, where he would later become a professor of painting and drawing. He was quickly identified as a star on the rise and at the age of 29, was included in the Guggenheim Museum’s “Young American Artists,” Exxon National Exhibition. A decade later he was granted a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, where his work is now part of the permanent collection. Though his career was cut short by his untimely death in 1998, Nachume exhibited at some of the most prominent galleries in New York and around the world. Miller's parents were both Holocaust survivors. His father was a captain in the front lines of the Russian Army during World War II and his mother was a Lithuanian who had once been held captive in a concentration camp. Both escaped the Nazis, re-united and fled to Israel. Nahum was born during their voyage, in Frankfurt, Germany, on January 28, 1949. He grew up in the town of Holon, Israel, where he was inspired by his father who spent most of his post-war days carving elaborate wood sculptures of Cubist human forms. Nachum, on the contrary, excelled in painting. By the age of 16, Miller was painting elaborate surreal dream lands referencing religion, politics and the history of Modern Art. His earlier works show similarities to Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dali and Francisco Goya. Miller was enlisted in the Israeli Army where he worked as one of Ariel Sharon's personal assistants and also fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He went to New York in 1966 to study at the School of Visual Arts, and joined the faculty in 1977 to teach painting and drawing. He was enlisted in the Israeli Army and fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That same year, he received a scholarship from the Israeli-American Cultural Foundation. He married his girlfriend Ruth and moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts. In 1977, he joined the faculty to teach painting and drawing. Over the next two decades, Nachume was prolific in the range of media, styles, and references he incorporated into his art. His paintings and three-dimensional works pay homage to artists throughout history, from the classical Greeks to Robert Rauschenberg. He prioritized craft over concept and was a disciplined painter, never neglecting workmanship in favor of a trend. His work is marked with curiosity, sincerity and intensity. Cara McCarty, an assistant curator in the department of architecture and design, organized the current show. It reveals Mr. Miller as someone who finds common ground with both Turner and Jackson Pollock - with the former's Romantic re-creations of storms at sea and with the latter's search for content in abstract gesture. Selected One-Person Exhibitions 1976: "Drawing Show", Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York 1981: "Figures", A&M Artwork, New York 1988: Exit Art, New York; "Projects: Nachume Miller", Museum of Modern Art, New York 1989: E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York 1990: "Nachume Miller: Views", E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York 1993: "Sensual Painting", E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York 1994: The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University Selected Group Exhibitions 1968: "10+ For and Against", Tel Aviv Aviva Uri, Michael Druks, Nahum Miller, Izzika Gaon, Izzika Raffi Lavie. 1970: "10+ In a Circle", Tel Aviv Moshe Gershuni, Buky Schwartz, Igael Tumarkin, Reuven Kadim (Berman), 1972: "Symbols and Imagination", Artists' Pavilion, Tel Aviv; "July '72", Gallery 220, Tel-Aviv 1975: "The Work of Nine Graduates of the School of Visual Arts", New York; 112 Greene Street Gallery, New York; "Group Indiscriminate", 112 Green Street Gallery, New York 1976: "8 Israeli Artists", Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York 1978: "Young American Artists", Exxon National Exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979: The Kadishman Connection Israel Museum, Jerusalem Menashe Kadishman, Larry Abramson, Yaacov Agam, Nachum Miller, Jacob El Hanani,Samuel Bak, Koki Doktori...

Dimensions: 32"h, 25"w canvas; 38.5"h, 32"with frame Work is titled "Two Lillies" Elsie Stevenson (1890–1965) was an American painter and printmaker. Beulah Stevenson, (1875-1965...

Composition in Red - Framed. French American Frédéric Choisel is inspired by the cities of France, New York and the Bay Area and creates elegant abstractions that tell a story of urb...

Mi obra, creada con oleos, refleja una exploración abstracta y vibrante del espíritu humano. La elección de colores vivos y las formas entrelazadas capturan la complejidad emocional ...

Mi obra, creada con oleos, refleja una exploración abstracta y vibrante del espíritu humano. La elección de colores vivos y las formas entrelazadas capturan la complejidad emocional ...

Mi obra, creada con oleos, refleja una exploración abstracta y vibrante del espíritu humano. La elección de colores vivos y las formas entrelazadas capturan la complejidad emocional ...