Ramon Prats

Abstract Expressionist Latin American Painting

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...

John von Wicht (American, 1888-1970) Oil on Japanese Rice Paper. Hand signed and dated in pencil lower right. Sheet Size: 21 x 29.25 in. Johannes Von Wicht was born in Holstein, ...

Rene Duvillier (French, 1919-2002), "Arc en Ciel, Arc en Mer" 1990, oil on canvas, signed lower left, signed, titled, and dated verso, Provenance: gallery label from Galerie Mostini, Paris, France affixed verso, canvas: 25.5"h x 32"w, overall (with frame): 27.5"h x 33.75" Done in a bold, vibrant, blue with red and white. René Duvillier (1919-2002) Born in Oyonnax (Ain) and died in 2002 in Paris. French artist. Painter of the new school in Paris. Despite studying at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (workshop of Charles Guerin, pupil of Gustave Moreau), Duvillier nevertheless asserted himself to be self-taught. 1939-1945: Five years of captivity. Duvillier was deported to Ukraine and then to Poland for several escape attempts and for acts of resistance. 1945: moves to Paris. 1952: A decisive meeting with Charles Estienne , an influential critic who tried to reconcile gestural abstraction and surrealist automatism. This integrates him into the group of painters of the new school in Paris which he shows at the gallery of Babylon. This is how Duvillier got to know Jean Degottex, Jean Messagier, Hans Hartung, Charles Lapicque and Serge Poliakoff. He was very much supported by the critic to whom great intellectual complicity links him. 1954-1955: René Duvillier, invited to Brittany by Charles Estienne , discovers the sea: "I found the movement and the gesture, it was a dreadful shock" explains the painter. Duvillier painted a series of polychrome canvases (black, purple, blue) on the sea as well as the series of "Seahorses", colored inks on paper. He was part of the New Ecole de Paris along with Nicolas de Staël, André Lanskoy, Pierre Soulages, and Jean René Bazaine. 1966: Contacts with scientists (CERN, School of Chemistry, Faculty of Geneva ). Duvillier discovers an astonishing similarity between some of his works and photos of physical and cosmic phenomena. Professor at the National School of Architecture of Versailles. René Duvillier joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris in 1935. After five years of captivity and an exhibition at the Stalag in Krakow, he joined the Nouvelle École de Paris. Under the guidance of the art critic Charles Estienne, it gathered painters from Surrealism and gesture or lyric abstraction that finally won the art scene in 1955. André Breton exhibited him and Benjamin Péret exalted his pictorial work, in which the brush movement brings to life natural elements, sea striking rocks and giving them almost supernatural attributes (1955). Select exhibitions 2010 - Ivre de peinture, Galerie Alain Margaron, Paris 2009 - René Duvillier, Galerie L'Or du Temps, Paris 2008 - Vous êtes le feu dans l'eau, Galerie Alain Margaron, Nice 2003 - Accrochage d'oeuvres de René Duvillier, Galerie Larock-Granoff, Paris 2003 - Ici - Ailleurs, Galerie Doris Benno, Saint-Paul-De-Vence 1999 - À l'Ouest du Monde, FIAC, Paris 1993 - Le ciel de la mer, Galerie Larock-Granoff, Paris 1987 - Peintures 1955-1983, Galerie Mostini, Paris 1986 - Galerie du Manoir, La Chaux de Fonds, Suisse 1971 - Ensemble de Peinture, Palais des Expositions, Genève 1970 - Têtes Chercheuses, Galerie Le Lutrin, Lyon 1965 - Benrath et Duvillier, Galerie Argos, Nantes 1964 - Galerie Byron, New York 1961 - La Mer des Vents, Galerie Smith, Bruxelles 1943 - La Genése, Stalag de Cracovie, Kobierzyn Select Group Exhibitions 2017 - Ailleurs est ici, École des Filles, Huelgoat 2017 - Le geste et la matière une abstraction "autre" Paris, 1945-1965, Fondation Clément/Centre Pompidou, Martinique 2011 - L'Aventure de l'Art Abstrait, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest, Brest 2008 - Les Nuagistes, Collégiale Saint-André, Chartres 2002 - Art ou Nature ?, Musée du Luxembourg, Luxembourg 1999 - Actualité des collections du XXe siècle 1996-1999, musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon 1999 - L'Intimité des dessins, Galerie Alain Margaron, Paris 1997 - Un combat pour l'Art Moderne, Hommage à René Déroudille., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon 1995 - Nantes et le surréalisme, Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, Nantes 1991 - André Breton, La beauté convulsive, Centre George Pompidou, Paris 1990 - André Breton, Musée national, Madrid 1989 - I Surrealisti, Palazzo Reale, Milan 1987 - Le Visionnaire, Galerie du Manoir, La Chaux de Fonds, Suisse 1986 - Blanc/Noir/Blanc, Centre Culturel de Landerneau et Musée des Jacobins, Morlaix 1984 - Autour de Michel Ragon, Paris Art Center, Paris 1981 - Paris-Paris 1937-1957, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 1980 - Bilan de l'art contemporain, Palais des Congrès, Québec 1973 - Exposition internationale du dessin original...

Adja Yunkers, Latvian/American, 1900-1983. 1973 Mixed media collage painting with applied threads on canvas, Titled "Collage #67". Initialed "A. Y." and dated "'73" lower left, ...