Modern Abstract Paintings

Large gilt framed abstract modernist landscape of Jerusalem. Framed it measures 33.25 X 41.25 inches. Canvas measures 28 x 36 inches. Bold Blue sky. Avraham Binder was born in 1906 in Vilnius (or Vilna), now part of Lithuania. He began painting at an early age and completed the prescribed studies in painting at the academy of arts in his native city. Upon graduation, at the commencement exhibition of works submitted by the graduates, he was awarded a prize in recognition of his talents. Artistic talent had deep roots in the Binder family. Avraham's father and grandfather were both artistically inclined, as was his sister Zila Binder and daughter Yael. In fact, he came from a long line of master artistic bookbinders, hence the family surname. The Binder family emigrated to Palestine in 1920. There, his father established a bookbinding workshop in Tel-Aviv while Avraham pursued painting. Binder has not identified with any particular modern school nor narrow artistic doctrine. He struggles to verbally explain his personal conception. Instead, he derives inspiration from emotions, resulting in a great variety of artistic treatments. Particularly memorable are his urban landscapes with their predominance of blues and aquamarines, composed of a profusion of squares and rectangles, crowding one another and covering nearly the entire canvas. The angular shapes are interspersed with radiant dots of red, gold and yellow, like the lights of the big city. Those squares and rectangles reflect, perhaps, impressions of a childhood spent among books which were scattered about the home and workshop of his father, the bookbinder. These shapes, no doubt, had their influence upon the artist whose first youthful impressions were – books. Traces of these shapes are discernible in Binder’s work to this day, in the angularity of splashes of color which, no longer crowded together, are now well separated to create an airy spaciousness. Not only the splashes of color – the inventing space, too – creates figurative effects in the artist’s treatment. Avraham Binder is not a “cerebral” painter. Neither identified with any particular modern school, nor preaching any narrow artistic doctrine, he is an emotional artist: his inspiration, derived from the heart, leads him on to the most varied range of treatments in his artistic work. In vain might one try to persuade him to define his personal conception of painting. He is not one to indulge in verbal explanation. But his sheer artistic skill, his virtuosity with the paint brush, did impel him to experiment widely with the artistic techniques of the modern age. And his exceptional talent stood him in good stead in all this experimentation. Binders large-scale urban landscapes are not mere constructs to represent our present-day architecture with its pervasive angularity. Made up as they are of color, Binder’s unique color composition qualifies these canvases to be ranked among the foremost artistic works in Israeli painting. They are uniquely Binder, very different from what we see in the work of his contemporaries. Here and there, Binder also introduces the human element into these paintings. He lives and breathes the atmosphere of his surroundings, deeply experiencing the sea and the shore of Tel-Aviv that confront him day after day, and which he has transferred to his canvases, as metaphors in paint, throughout the life. More recently, he has created a new series of shore-and-seascapes, in tones ranging from brown to blue. ochre, violet and pale yellow – marvelous views of the sea and of figures enlivening its shore. In yet another series, featuring nearly the same range of hues, he lets us view, through his eyes, the Carmel Market in Tel-Aviv, or the city’s coffee houses with their crowds of people, heads bunched together as if in search of human closeness, with the windows looking in upon them. He has also done large paintings of Jerusalem...

View of a Port "59" French Modernist School Oil on canvas Illegibly signed. l.r., dated "59" 28 3/4 x 23 3/4 (30 x 25 frame) inches A positively brilliant, Modernist view of a French port...

Abstract watercolor composition bearing the influence of the earlier color-block compositions of Paul Klee. Pawel August Kontny, (Polish-German-American artist) He was born in Laurahuette, Poland, in 1923, the son of a wealthy pastry shop owner. In 1939 he began studying architecture in Breslau where he was introduced to the European masters and to the work of some of the German Expressionists, soon afterward banned as "degenerate artists" and removed from museums throughout Germany by the Nazi regime. His studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, traveling in many countries as a soldier, he sketched various landscapes but in 1945, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. After the war, he studied at the Union of Nuremberg Architects to help design buildings to replace ones destroyed in the war. He recorded his impressions of the local population and the landscapes through his watercolors and drawings. Pawel Kontny thereafter moved to Nuremberg, Germany, becoming a member of the Union of Nuremberg Architects and helping to rebuild the city's historic center. He soon decided to concentrate on his professional art career. He married Irmgard Laurer, a dancer with the Nuremberg Opera. Pavel Kontny 's career as an artist was launched with his participation in an all German exhibition, held at the Dusseldorf Museum in 1952. He held one-man shows in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. During his trip to the United States in 1960, Kontny became instantly enamored with Colorado, and decided to relocate to Cherry Hills with his wife and two children. He quickly established himself in the local art community, being affiliated for a time with Denver Art Galleries and Saks Galleries. His subject matter became the Southwest. During this time he received the Prestigious Gold Medal of the Art Academy of Rome. His extensive travel provided material for the paintings he did using his hallmark marble dust technique. he also worked equally in pastel, watercolor, charcoal and pencil-and-ink. in a style which merged abstraction and realist styles, influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting and South Western American landscapes. In the early 1960s he was one of only a few European-born professional artists in the state, a select group that included Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), a member of the prewar Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Germany, and Roland Detre (1903-2001), a Hungarian modernist painter. As a Denver, Colorado resident, Pavel Kontny exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, Germany and Japan. There, he was inspired by frequent trips to Native American pueblos in the Southwest, as well as by the study of the Plains Indians of Montana and Wyoming. Over the years Kontny had a number of students and generously helped young artist by hosting exhibitions at his Cherry Hills home. For many years he generously donated his paintings to support charitable causes in Denver. Influences during his European years included German pastelist C.O. Muller, German Informel painter Karl Dahmen and Swiss artist, Hans Erni. In the early 1950s his painting style showed the influence of the Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 who had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century in Germany. By the middle of the decade his style incorporated more referential abstraction and total abstraction, resulting in part from his study of Hans Hartung, a German artist based in Paris who exhibited his gestural abstract work in Germany. The American moon landing in 1969 inspired Paul Kontny...

Abstract landscape painting of a white cloud in a light blue sky over an expansive dark brown country field "West Wind," painted by David Konigsberg in 2019 18 x 24 x 2 inches Ready...

Hanna Ben Dov is an Israeli abstract painter who was born in Jerusalem in 1919 and died in Paris in 2008. Ben Dov's father, Yacov Ben-Dov, was a famous Israeli photographer who founded the photography department in the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1910. Hannah herself attended Bezalel during the 1940s, and later continued to Camberwell College of Arts in London. After the completion of her formal education she moved to Paris, where she exhibited for the first time in 1948 and has been living and working there since, as a part of the local abstract artists school. She took part in the first French Biennale of 1951, that was held in Menton. Collections Her paintings can be found in several collections, including the French State Collection, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art collection, the Bezalel National Museum collection in Jerusalem and the Rockefeller Museum collection in New York. Ben Dov resided for her last two years at the Maison Des Artistes Home in Nogent-Sur-Marne, France, just outside Paris. Exhibitions Gallery97 Tel Aviv Paintings...

Abstract landscape painting of a gestural blue cloud over an olive green field "Hayfields" painted by David Konigsberg in 2015 oil on wood panel, 23 x 24 x 2 inches Ready to hang, s...

COASTAL THUNDERSTORM Size: 52.5 x 70 cm (including frame) Oil on Canvas An emotive and wonderfully executed mid-century abstract artwork, painted in oil onto canvas and dated 1963. ...

In this artwork the artist uses the medium spontaneously .The paint has been applied thickly to the surface. The resulting work emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of the artist. size is with frame. Motke Blum was born in Racacun, Romania in 1925. Early in his childhood, the Blum family moved to Bukarest where they settled in a house situated near a circus. The circus would become young Blum's greatest love. He befriended several of the clowns and other performers and, when not painting or playing in clay, Blum could be found enjoyoing the company of these spirited entertainers. These experiences would later become a recurring theme in many of his works of art. In 1938, he was taken by the Romanian Iron Guard. When the Germans invaded Romania, Blum was taken to a forced labor camp. Even during his imprisonment, he continued to create art, painting on the walls of the camp. He escaped the camp in 1944 and boarded an immigrants' ship to Israel. One of the three ships in the convoy was sunk by a German torpedo. Motke later incorporated shipwrecks, boats, and other maritime subjects into several of his paintings. Over the course of his long and fruitful career, Blum showed internationally at over fifty one-man-shows with exhibits in Israel, Holland, England, Belgium, the United States, France, Australia, and more. His art has been commissioned for public buildings and by prominant figures in Israel and around the world, and a series of posters were commissioned by the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Tourism. Giving back to the community has been a focus throughout his life. After establishing a studio at Chutzot Hayotzer, Motke welcomed schools and both adults and children with special needs, using painting...

Efraim Modzelevich (1931-1995) Work is abstract in subject, and expressive in terms of technique. The artist uses a muted color palette, and thick layers of paint to build up his co...

Lake Oil on canvas, 50x71 cm Lidija Auza (1914. 24. 02 Vitebsk, Belarus – 1989. 13. 12 Riga, Latvia) Painter She studied at the Art Academy of Latvia (1936-1938) and graduated ...

The Pathway by Andre Guillou (French 1925-2017) signed and dated 1970 oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 23.5 x 29 inches provenance: private collection, Fr...

Abstract landscape painting of a white cloud in a light blue sky over a dark country field "Hayfield Two Thirty," painted by David Konigsberg in 2019 oil o...