Paul Valentine Lantz

Card Players, Playing Five Card Stud

1938

Signed lower left.

Signed lower right and dated 1954. Bio: FASANELLA, RALPH (1914-97) was a self-taught painter who created large, colorful and intricate paintings of working-class culture and American politics from 1945 until his death in 1997. Fasanella had an artistic vision born of a working life. A child of Italian immigrants, he spent his youth delivering ice with his father and enduring the harsh regimen of a Catholic reform school. During the Great Depression, Fasanella worked in garment factories and as a truck driver. From his mother—a literate, sensitive, and progressive woman, Fasanella acquired a social conscience. Through her influence he became active in antifascist and trade union causes. Fasanella's political beliefs were radicalized by the Depression. His antifascist zeal led him to volunteer for duty in the International Brigades fighting fascism in Spain, where he served in 1937-1938. Upon his return to New York City Fasanella became an organizer for various unions, particularly the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, with whom he achieved some major organizing successes. In 1945, disillusioned by the labor movement and plagued by a painful sensation in his fingers, Fasanella started to draw. He left organizing and began to paint full time. He painted obsessively, capturing the vibrant moods of the city and the tumult of American politics. For a brief time he received some critical notice for his work, and had shows of his work in galleries as well as union halls. Fasanella included in his paintings a profusion of brightly colored details, showed interiors and exteriors simultaneously, and combined past and future. He populated his paintings with likenesses of family and friends. In 1950 Fasanella married Eva Lazorek, a schoolteacher who supported the couple through over two decades of artistic obscurity and blacklisting by the FBI. In the 1950s Fasanella retreated from political content in his works out of fear of reprisals. With the emergence of the New Left in the 1960s, however, his works became large, sharply focused political essays using images from the popular media. In 1972 Fasanella was featured in "New York" magazine and in an illustrated coffee-table book, "Fasanella's City". His large-scale, intricate paintings of urban life and American politics were then introduced to art critics and the public. In the late 1970s Fasanella spent two years in Lawrence, researching the 1912 Bread and...

David Solot, a dentist and painter, was born in Falciu (Romania) and settled in Paris in 1928. His art was surrealistic dentally inspired plus portraits and city landscapes. **************************** Translated from an article by Luana Hrisanti Rigot: "In 1956, at the Charlotte Norberg Gallery (Paris), he presented his first personal exhibition, composed of an ensemble of surrealist paintings of professional inspiration (dental elements). Two years later, at Gallery Royale (Rochefort), he exhibits another 50 paintings on the subject. At that time, a decisive event for the painter David Solot was made: a great new-York-born antibiotic producer Lederle Cy learns about his work and contacts him through the US Ambassador to Paris, proposing an advertising contract and buying the reproduction right for 24 of its canvases. A year later, the same company bought the right to print three of its cloths in color. This was the starting point of his international notoriety. In 1959, the American Dental...

Signed in Cyrillic, verso

Signed and titled lower left. Francois Gall, Hungarian by birth, became a naturalized French citizen in 1942. He is best known as an impressionist painter in the pure French traditi...

David Solot, a dentist and painter, was born in Falciu (Romania) and settled in Paris in 1928. His art was surrealistic dentally inspired plus portraits and city landscapes. **************************** Translated from an article by Luana Hrisanti Rigot: "In 1956, at the Charlotte Norberg Gallery (Paris), he presented his first personal exhibition, composed of an ensemble of surrealist paintings of professional inspiration (dental elements). Two years later, at Gallery Royale (Rochefort), he exhibits another 50 paintings on the subject. At that time, a decisive event for the painter David Solot was made: a great new-York-born antibiotic producer Lederle Cy learns about his work and contacts him through the US Ambassador to Paris, proposing an advertising contract and buying the reproduction right for 24 of its canvases. A year later, the same company bought the right to print three of its cloths in color. This was the starting point of his international notoriety. In 1959, the American Dental...

Number 382 in the Schoonover raisonné. Signed and dated 1909. Beautifully reframed in custom 23 karat gold leaf frame.

Ray Richardson is a contemporary British artist known for his cinematic paintings. The artist employs icons of working-class London, including bull terriers, soccer pitches, and grit...

A monumental Italian landscape oil painting. "Apuan Mountains" of Italy (The Italian Alps) Shepherds in the mountains with the village of Seravezza below. Painted by Andreas Marko...

Venetian harbor scene with St Marks in the background oil on oak panel. Exceptional quality. Signed illegibly lower left. From an old Philadelphia collection.

Bruce Adams was a painter, art educator, and writer. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1952, he received a B.S. in 1976 and an M.A. in 1983 from Buffalo State College. Adams’s work is includ...

Bruce Adams was a painter, art educator, and writer. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1952, he received a B.S. in 1976 and an M.A. in 1983 from Buffalo State College. Adams’s work is includ...