Rolph Scarlett

Abstract

Signed lower left. “Abstract and Fractured Biomorphic and Geometric Forms” which was painted in the mid to late 1950’s is a nod to Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, which Hart may have seen when it was given to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1958. Several elements in the painting clearly reference Guernica: the black geometric and cut-out shapes, the biomorphic shapes, the abstracted horse’s head and body, with a district reference to the bull’s tail, along with the black and white pallet choice and various details throughout-all hallmarks of Picasso’s Guernica. The abstracted reality Hart presents in these references go beyond a simple nod and reflect a personal interpretation reflected in the splintered abstraction and her bespoke interpretation. Agnes Hart’s first began her career as a social realist artist in the 1930’s. She was also WPA artist. Her longtime friend Milton Avery encouraged her, and she exhibited in the same gallery in the late 1940’s, the RoKo Gallery. Her instinctive and personalized modernist periods often reflected a similar path of her compatriot artists during the first half of the 20th century. Her early works were influenced by her teachers Josef Presser, Paul Burlin and Lucile Blanch, and Reginald Neal, and reflected historical modern trends-at times showing the influence of Avery and other modernist. Like Elaine DeKooning, Lee Kraser, Michael Corrine West...

Signed lower right. Description An example of Scarlett’s abstract drip painting, this untitled work has linear and geometric elements rendered in shades of black, rose, and blue and...

Signed lower right and dated & titled verso. Enrico Donati, a surrealist and abstract expressionist painter, was born in Milan, Italy in 1909 and died in Manhattan on April 25, 2008. He was known for his association with the surrealist movement of the 1940's, but his artwork continued to transform itself through the many trends that have occurred during his long career. In Italy he attended the Universita degli Studi in Pavia where he studied economics. In 1934, he moved to the United States settling in New York where he studied at the New School for Social Research and the Art Students' League. Considered the surviving dean of the Surrealist Movement and a member of the New York School, Donati painted with Ernst, Matta and Tanguy in the thirties and forties, and in particular with Andre Breton, regarded by many to be the grand master of Surrealism. He helped organize the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme in Paris in 1947 where he exhibited three of his pieces. The Surrealists were known to avoid presenting or representing reality, and put the emphasis on invention and creativity by uncovering the poetic aspect of life with its kaleidoscopic multidimensional images, using reality only to enhance imagination. Donati survived the decline of Surrealism in the late 1940's by adapting his style to current art trends as he worked with new materials and textures throughout the 1950's. One trend with which he became involved was Abstract Expressionism, which originated in the 1940s, and became popular in the 1950s. It was a movement in which artists typically applied paint, rapidly and with force, to large canvases, in an effort to show feelings and emotions. Paint might be applied with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas. Abstract Expressionist work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, although it is actually highly planned. Donati held a retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1961 and went on to exhibit at the Betty Parsons Gallery with other forerunners of American Abstract Expressionism: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock. It was at this time that Donati created some of his most inventive and extraordinary work, some of which was featured in a survey exhibition at the Alter & Gil Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, in January 2000. He has held many teaching positions and has been an active lecturer, while continuing to add to his artistic repertoire. From 1960 to 1962 he was a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, and from 1962 to 1972 a Member of the Yale University Council for the Arts and Architecture. He has had seventy-five one-man shows, among them an exhibit of new paintings at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery (57th St., New York) in the fall of 1997. Donati's work is held in collections throughout the world, and his work has appeared in over 300 articles and publications, two hard cover books...

Rolph Scarlett (Canadian/American, 1889 - 1984) “Geometric Composition” Signed lower right, circa late 1930’s early 1940’s 19 ½ x 26 inches Mixed media, Price on request About Rolph Scarlett was a painter of geometric and linear forms, an industrial designer, and a pioneer in helping establish non-objective art as an aesthetic in America. He also worked in an abstract art style during the American avant-garde movement which extended into the 1940s. He was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada and travelled to New York City as an 18-year-old. By 1924 he made New York City his home. In 1939, Scarlett was one of the founding members and forces which steered the development of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York. (later, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). Guggenheim was the sponsor behind the Avant Garde and pioneering, philosophy of Baroness Hilla Rebay who founded the early museum. She was both the founding curator and director of the museum, as well as an abstract artist. She encouraged and worked with Scarlett in the early museum years, together promoting the concepts of non-objective painting. In Scarlett’s aesthetic these where geometric elements intuitively placed in non-descript flat and three-dimensional space. Any discussion of the history of the Guggenheim Museum must include four key figures: Hilla Rebay (1890-1967), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953), and Rolf Scarlett...

Feelings. 2019, hardboard, oil, 39x28 cm

"Abstract Composition" Abstract Oil Painting 24" x 18" inch by Youssef Sida Signed and dated 1990 Youssef Sida 1922-1994 Born in 1922 in Damietta, and ...

"Faces I" Oil on Carton Abstract Painting 28" x 22" inch by Youssef Sida Signed and dated 1990 Youssef Sida 1922-1994 Born in 1922 in Damietta, and in 1...

This work, "We Could Sit Outside" by contemporary female painter Dorothy Fitzgerald is part of the artist's Smile Art series, created during the quarantine a...