Sarah Van Beckam

Untitled 13-41

2016

Original abstract Acrylic Painting on Canvas, affixed to Windsor Newton paper. The moods and whims of nature influence the work of Sarah Van Beckum. D...

Original abstract Acrylic Painting on Canvas, affixed to Windsor Newton paper. The moods and whims of nature influence the work of Sarah Van Beckum. ...

Robert Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110C 1968 Acrylic and graphite on paper 15.2 x 20.3 cms (6 x 8 ins) Robert Motherwell's Elegies series represent one of the iconic motifs of Abstract Expressionism.  Based on a 1948 ink illustration the artist executed accompanying a Harold Rosenberg poem, “A Bird for every bird,” the drawing shows the hypnotically repetitive patterning of ovoids and vertical beams.  The stark contrast of the black ink on white paper references the symbolic use of the color black by artists such as Goya, Manet and Matisse to convey death, loss, and tragedy.  Motherwell was quite affected by the turbulence of the Spanish Civil War and alludes to the Spanish republic in his Elegies. Motherwell’s plumbing the depths of poetry, history, and primordial art in the Elegies is considered a hallmark of nascent Abstract Expressionist painting in its desire to "excavate" essential imagery of mankind. Motherwell, who originally trained as a philosophy scholar and later became of the great editors of 20th century art documents, grasped very early on the crucial importance that in order to contribute meaningfully to the canon of modern art, one must create a principle of aesthetics. Through the surrealist concept of automatism, the artist finally found the creative principle that eventually governed his extraordinary artistic output and produced the Elegies, one of the most salient, immediate painterly images of 20th century abstract painting. In fact, he has alluded to the fact that each one of his Elegies begins as an automatic drawing, and certain shapes are then blocked to create the signature armature of the vertical bars and ovals. The Elegies seem to possess the power of an archetypal image, an image the mind already grasps on a subconscious level. Motherwell's play of dualities of black and white as well as other dichotomies—the geometric versus the organic, chaos versus order, death versus life—was a condition of living through a tumultuous period in American history. During an interview, he vividly recalled the 1940s as the time when society was ordered by a set of contradictions.  In Motherwell's Elegies, he not only discovered an incredibly elastic pictorial language that would communicate on multiple levels but also acknowledged these contradictions in a manner that would resonate in abstract form.  The present work served as a model for a painting, Spanish Elegy...

This highly gestural and drip composition on paper balances a kaleidoscope of colour -- grape, magenta, orange, gold, green -- with areas of black and grey. It is a muscular explosion inspired by the classic Greek poem, the Odyssey, which charts the journey of hero Odysseus home to Ithaca after the 10 year Trojan war. This work on paper is currently unframed. However, it can be mounted on panel and framed or framed behind glass. Adam Cohen born in New Jersey in 1959, studied with artist Lilian Marzell, a friend of Willem de Kooning. Cohen earned his BFA at Philadelphia's Tyler School of Art at Temple University which included a year of painting in Rome. Returning to New York he studied at the School of Visual Arts, the Arts Students League and Parsons School of Design. Cohen has exhibited in Italy, Holland, New Jersey, New York and Ontario. His work is in numerous private collections. In 2015, he was awarded the International Art Prize Giuseppe Gambino...