Sam Messer

Large Abstract Expressionist Figure Handmade Paper Etching Silkscreen Print

1987

This is an interesting abstract work done with handmade Japanese Kozo or Washi type fiber paper mounted on board. Hand signed and dated in wonderful muted earth tones of fall foliage. Taro Yamamoto (1919 – 1994) belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and others became a leading art movement of the post World War II era. He was also associated with Action painting Yamamoto was born in Hollywood, California. He lived in Japan from age six to age nineteen. In 1936 he returned to the USA and began studies in cubism at Los Angeles City College. In 1941 he joined the U.S. Army and served during WWII. After being discharged from the service he returned to California where he studied at the Santa Monica City College. 1950-1952 at The Art Students League of New York, under Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor, Reginald Marsh, Byron Browne and Vaclav Vytlacil; 1951-1953 at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York City. In 1952 he won a John Sloan Fellowship from the Art Students League. The next year he traveled to Europe under a Edward G. MacDowell Traveling Fellowship where he studies in Stuttgart, Germany with Willi Baumeister. He also exhibited at Galerie Huit in Paris. In 1954 Yamamoto was invited to a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There he worked alongside Stuart Davis, Milton Avery, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko developing his unique abstract expressionist style. Later in his life he devoted himself to a more hard-edge geometric style of painting. He married Gwyneth Cotton, a naturalized English woman, in 1955, and they lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. They were active at the Universalist Church of Provincetown. (He descended from a long line of Shinto priests) Yamamoto died in Provincetown in 1994. Selected Solo Exhibitions 1953: Galerie Huit, Paris; 1955: The Art Students League of New York, NYC; 1960-1962: Krasner Gallery, NYC; 1963-1964: 371 Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Selected Group Exhibitions 1951: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; 1952: NY Contemporary Gallery, NYC; 1952, 1955, 1956, 1962: Provincetown Art...

Shawn Dulaney The Virtues III Handmade paint on venetian plaster on paper, signed and titled verso 22 x 30 in. (sheet), 28 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (frame). Shawn Dulaney’s paintings are layered constructions of color, spacious abstractions that read like cloud banks, flows of water, magnetic fields charged with monumental energy. Dulaney spent her childhood on a vast Colorado plateau looking west to the Rocky Mountains and has travelled widely, immersing herself in landscape. Her work captures the experience and feeling of place. Doug McClemont of ArtNews writes that Dulaney’s paintings “concern the earth, and the unyielding hand of nature”. Her work has been described by William Zimmer of The New York Times as belonging to “a very strong tradition, that of 19 th -century Northern European Romanticism in which nature was seen as corresponding to human emotional states.” He says of her work, “Ms. Dulaney makes it clear that her inner life is very much a part of each painting, and this alone distinguishes it from most abstraction…Shawn Dulaney is deliberately out for grandeur, but she is also out for intimacy. Her paintings take advantage of their innate ambiguity and declare themselves to be very current in the thinking that lies behind them.” "The kind of painting to which Ms. Dulaney's work is most closely related, at least superficially, is the Mark Rothko branch of Abstract Expressionism, in which a sense of deep space is sought." Dulaney makes handmade paints consisting of acrylic medium and powdered pigments allowing her to get a wide range of saturations and transparencies as they spread out on Venetian plaster and linen over panel. “Her surfaces”, as described by Dominick Lombardi-also of The New York Times, are “exquisitely painted and a pleasure to see.” Dulaney continues to travel between New York, the American Southwest, and the United Kingdom, as well as having recently been awarded the Pink House Artist Residency on the Beara Peninsula in Ireland. Her paintings capture the ephemeral and evoke the Celtic notion of a “thin place”, a place of energy where the veil between this world and the eternal is thin. A working artist for over 4 decades, Dulaney is represented by Sears Peyton Gallery, Weber Fine Art, Carrie Haddad Gallery and Beth Urdang Gallery. Exhibited widely, her paintings can be found in extensive public and private collections including those of the Hunterdon Museum of Art in NJ, the Venetia Resort in China, J Crew in NYC, as well as in the private collections of author Annie Proulx, actor Steve Buscemi, talk-show host Conan O’Brien and musician Stuart Copeland. Her work has appeared in episodes of TV’s Enlightened, Portlandia and Sex & the City, and the films It’s Complicated (2009), Interview (2007) and John Wick...

Abstract Figural and Pediments - Two Sided Art Mid century figural and architectural painting on paper. Heavy layers of paint with a dog on an abutment and two Japanese wrestlers...

This abstract painting, created on a cardboard base, presents an explosion of energy and dynamism, characteristic of the action painting style. The use of enamel and acrylic paint pr...