Rene Couturier

French Gestural Abstract Expressionist Textured Oil Painting

c.1970

Perez Celis (American, Argentinian 1939-2008) Oil and mixed media on canvas 1993 Latin abstract expressionism oil painting depicting a color block and drip motif Hand signed and dated to lower left. In gilt gold frame. Approximate dimensions: canvas h. 14", w. 21"; frame h. 24", w. 31", d. 2.25". Celis Pérez (1939 – 2008) was an Argentine artist usually referred to as Pérez Celis. He earned international recognition for his paintings, sculptures, murals and engravings. Pérez was born in San Telmo on the South side of Buenos Aires, and grew up in Liniers, on the opposite end of town. Working as a newsboy during childhood, he learned the basics of drawing and painting via correspondence classes. In 1954 he entered the Manuel Belgrano National School of Fine Arts, and under the guidance of teachers like Leopoldo Presas, Santiago Cogorno, and Libero Badii, Pérez Celis developed his interest in abstraction. He first exhibited at age 17, at Galería La Fantasma. Following his entry into the professional arts world, he began using his name in a reversed form. At the start of his career he has been influenced by Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely during a 1957 retrospective of the latter's works at the National Fine Arts Museum. Some of his later works bear the influence of Gerhard Richter. He married Sarah Fernández in 1959 and relocated to Uruguay for less than a year invited by Carlos Páez Vilaró . Took part in the "Group of 8" – proponents of abstract art among the normally conservative local audiences. "Grupo de los 8", was a movement of Latin American, Uruguayan and Argentine artists formed in 1958 together with Oscar García Reino, Miguel Ángel Pareja, Raúl Pavlovsky, Lincoln Presno, Américo Sposito, Alfredo Testoni and Julio Verdie in order to promote new tendencies in painting. In 1960 they were invited by art critic Rafael Squirru to join the international exhibition at the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (of which he was creator and first director) with artists such as Willem de Kooning, Roger Hilton and Lucio Fontana. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1960, and opened a downtown atelier with the support of Guido Di Tella, his first mecena. Pérez Celis explored geometric art, and builds his first mural, Fuerza América, in 1962. Indigenous patterns and colors would reappear in many of his productions during the 1960s and 1970s, and distinguished him from most other local artists, among whom pop art and figurative art was more influential. His work had a more raw, Art Brut , Brutalist feel to it. He was featured in more than 120 solo shows during his career, notably the Galerie Bellechasse, Anita Shapolsky Gallery New York, (he showed with Agustin Fernandez, Rodolfo Abularach, Giancarlo Puppo and Cuban artist Mario Bencomo) Arteconsult, Boston & Panama, Witcomb, etc. and his art was purchased for many private collections and first-rate museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He received commissions from the Argentine government, which placed his works in the Ministro Pistarini International Airport, from other governments, and from prominent individuals and businesses. In 1977, following his wife's passing in an automobile accident he remarried and lived in Caracas, Paris, New York City, and Miami in subsequent years. He shared his time between Buenos Aires and New York in 1994, a retrospective of his work was hosted at Biblioteca Nacional visited by more than 300000 persons. He continued exhibiting in Latin America, in the Sanyo Gallery in Tokyo, the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City, and at numerous universities. Among his numerous recognitions in later years was the Alba Award at the 61st Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas Argentino, and he was proclaimed a Distinguished Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires in 2001. He also created several literary illustrations, notably those for Jorge Luis Borges' Spanish-language translation of Walt Whitman's poem Leaves of Grass. A fan of the Club Atlético Boca Juniors football team, he created two murals in 1997 for the team's La Bombonera Stadium in Buenos Aires: "Idolos" (Idols) and "Mito y Destino" (Myth and Destiny), both Venetian mosaics and bronze sculpture on cement. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, NY Museum of Modern Latin American Art...

Ralph Rosenborg (American, 1913-1992) "American Landscape, Sky and Shore, 1973" Oil on canvas. Signed 'Rosenborg' (lower right). Titled (verso). 30 x 40 in Ralph Rosenborg (1913–1992) was an American artist whose paintings were described as both expressionist and abstract and who was a colleague of the New York Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike them, however, he preferred to make small works and tended to explicitly draw upon natural forms and figures for his abstract subjects. Called a "highly personal artist," he developed a unique style that was considered to be both mystical and magic. His career was exceptionally long, covering more than 50 years. Rosenborg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 9, 1913. In 1929, while he was a high school student, he began to work with the designer, artist, and instructor, Henriette Reiss. When Rosenborg encountered her, Reiss was serving as an instructor for the School Art League in the American Museum of Natural History. She was then engaged in instructing both students and their teachers in the city school system by a method she called Rhythmic Design. She believed inspiration for abstract designs could be found in rhythms—rhythms that could be perceived in ordinary perceptions much as they are when listening to music. In May 1930 Reiss selected a drawing by Rosenborg to be shown in an exhibition of creative design by City high school students. From 1930 to 1933, aged 17 to 20, Rosenborg studied with Reiss in what Vivien Raynor of the New York Times called a "pupil-apprentice" relationship. During this time she instructed him in music appreciation, literature, and art history as well as giving technical training in art. In April 1934 Rosenborg was one of 1,500 artists to participate in the annual Salons of America exhibition, which was held that year in Rockefeller Center RCA Building. Each paid two dollars for the privilege of hanging up to three works and none was given prominence over the others. The New York Times reported that by the time the show closed a month later, some 30,000 people had viewed it. The following year he was given a solo exhibition (his first) at the Lounge Gallery of the Eighth Street Playhouse. The year after that he participated in a group show held by the Municipal Art Committee and in 1937 was given a second solo exhibition, this time in the Artists Gallery. That year he also became a founding member of and participated in a group show held by American Abstract Artists, a loose assembly of artists that aimed to promote abstract art and artists in New York. Its founders included Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Werner Drewes, Ibram Lassaw, Mercedes Matter, Louis Schanker, Vaclav Vytlacil and Rudolph Weisenborn. At roughly the same time Rosenborg associated himself with a group of abstractionists that called itself "The Ten" (It included Ben-Zion, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Joe Solman) and in May 1938 joined with its other members in what would be his first appearance in a commercial gallery: the Gallery Georgette Passedoit. In 1938 he his work appeared in a group show at the Lounge Gallery, in 1939 in group shows at the Artists Gallery and at the Bonestell Gallery with David Burliuk, Earl Kerkam, Karl Knaths and Jean Liberte...

David Rankin American (b. 1946) Untitled (Black on gray) (1990) Gouache and charcoal on paper signed lower left 19 x 15 inches 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 Menorah...

Claude Vermette R.C.A. is a Canadian ceramicist and painter who was born in Montreal, Quebec, August 10, 1930 and who died in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, April 21, 2006. Artist of international reputation, he made important contributions to the ceramic arts in Canada As a ceramist who worked in the architecture field, Claude Vermette is a pioneer in Québec and in Canada with regards to this type of artistic expression. The bursts of colours of his wall size mural ceramics, the warmth of their hues and the play of their textures brought a human dimension in architectural spaces that were often grey and frigid. In his abstract paintings as well as in his prints and watercolours, Claude Vermette pursued this bold approach while constantly renewing and expanding the possibilities of colour and light. His work works with gradations of color field and shifting light. A native of Montreal, Quebec, Claude Vermette studied art under the guidance of Brother Jerome, c.s.c. at Notre-Dame College while also attending the Collège Saint-Laurent and the college of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur for his academic studies. Through his contact with Brother Jerome, he met Paul-Emile Borduas and joined the Automatiste group of emerging artists. They were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism. Members included Marcel Barbeau...

Claude Vermette R.C.A. is a Canadian ceramist and painter who was born in Montreal, Quebec, August 10, 1930 and who died in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, April 21, 2006. Artist of international reputation, he made important contributions to the ceramic arts in Canada As a ceramist who worked in the architecture field, Claude Vermette is a pioneer in Québec and in Canada with regards to this type of artistic expression. The bursts of colours of his ceramics, the warmth of their hues and the play of their textures brought a human dimension in architectural spaces that were often grey and frigid. In his abstract paintings as well as in his prints and watercolours, Claude Vermette pursued this bold approach while constantly renewing and expanding the possibilities of colour and light. His work works with gradations of color field and shifting light. A native of Montreal, Quebec, Claude Vermette studied art under the guidance of Brother Jerome, c.s.c. at Notre-Dame College while also attending the Collège Saint-Laurent and the college of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur for his academic studies. Through his contact with Brother Jerome, he met Paul-Emile Borduas and joined the Automatiste group of emerging artists. They were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism. Members included Marcel Barbeau...

Claude Vermette R.C.A. is a Canadian ceramicist and painter who was born in Montreal, Quebec, August 10, 1930 and who died in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, April 21, 2006. Artist of international reputation, he made important contributions to the ceramic arts in Canada As a ceramist who worked in the architecture field, Claude Vermette is a pioneer in Québec and in Canada with regards to this type of artistic expression. The bursts of colours of his wall size mural ceramics, the warmth of their hues and the play of their textures brought a human dimension in architectural spaces that were often grey and frigid. In his abstract paintings as well as in his prints and watercolours, Claude Vermette pursued this bold approach while constantly renewing and expanding the possibilities of colour and light. His work works with gradations of color field and shifting light. A native of Montreal, Quebec, Claude Vermette studied art under the guidance of Brother Jerome, c.s.c. at Notre-Dame College while also attending the Collège Saint-Laurent and the college of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur for his academic studies. Through his contact with Brother Jerome, he met Paul-Emile Borduas and joined the Automatiste group of emerging artists. They were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism. Members included Marcel Barbeau...

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