Peter Driben

The Make Out Room

C. 1950s

This piece came from the collection of the Bezalel Art Gallery on the Lower East Side of New York City. Emmanuil Snitkovsky is an internationally known artist, sculpture and poet. Emmanuil Snitkovsky was born into a family of artists and scholars from the Odessa Art College in Russia. Immersed in the traditions of Russia art, he approaches form, line, space and color with relentless vision and impeccable technique. Two highly successful artists, the husband and wife team of Emmanuil and Janet Snitkovsky have exhibited a selection of eight large Judaic paintings at the Chabad Chassidic Art Institute (Chai Gallery) in Crown Heights. Three of those paintings are truly singular visions of Jewish Art that cause us to stop and reassess our preconceptions about the meaning and importance of their subjects. Emmanuil and Janet Snitkovsky were both born in the Ukraine in the 1930′s. Emmanuil was trained in Odessa in public monument art, and Janet majored in fashion at the Lvov Decorative Art Institute. After both narrowly survived the devastation of the Second World War in Stalin’s Russia, they began to collaborate on state sponsored art works in 1962. For ten years, they worked on grandiose public sculptural projects to commemorate the fallen Russian heroes of the Second World War in Moscow, Kiev, Tula and Kazan. They were exemplary Soviet Realists working for the Soviet regime. Eventually, this career became untenable for them, both as artists and as Jews, when they clashed with Soviet officialdom over a commission to commemorate the Babi-Yar massacre. The Soviets refused to acknowledge this massacre of 100,000 Jews and eventually suppressed the memorial. In 1978, Emmanuil and Janet arrived in New York and began to recreate their artistic lives. In the ensuing 25 years, they have been quite successful, exhibiting widely in the United States and Europe. They have nurtured a hybrid style of painting and sculpture called “Renaissance Revival” combining contemporary and classical subjects in a stylized realism that evokes both the American regionalist Thomas Hart Benton and the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. The works are highly proficient, polished, and commercial productions in a quirky decorative style. They have continued to accept sculptural projects that have not shied away from kitschy realistic sculptures of Charlie Chaplin as “The Kid,” The Little Tramp” and Buster Keaton as “Cameramen.” In some ways, they have appropriated American culture just as they once accepted Soviet culture. Janet, a graduate of the Lvov College, was invited- by virtue of the high honors she achieved there- to matriculate at the Lvov University of Art. Such an opportunity is extremely rare for anyone, particularly for someone of Jewish descent. Their works of art are included in collections of the Japanese Imperial Family...

Painterly scene of boats and boats being built at the docks in old Pacific Grove, California by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). Signed"WHM" lower left. Presented in a fau...

Night Life in the City - Figurative Cityscape Mid 1960s cityscape by an unknown artist. Oil on artists board. Image, 16"H x 20"W

"Mutual Admiration" Flower Mid-Century Modern Oil Painting Monterey Artist Mid-Century Modern painting of a little blonde girl in a white apron adoring her flowers by Monterey Artist Rose Marie (Smith) Ansel, (American, 1921-2012) Rose Marie was born and lived in the Monterey area all her life. She volunteered in various city government associations and founded the Parade of Nations in 1970 which celebrated the many ethnic cultures on the Monterey Peninsula...

The Card Players Size: 32"x20" framed 48"x36" Waldemar Swierzy (1931 -2013) was born in Katowice Poland. A graduate of the Cracow Academy of Fine Ar...

Vibrant Gouache and watercolor painting by israeli master JOSSI STERN. on paper mounted to board. Hungary, b. 1923, d. 1992 Jossi (Yossi) Stern, son of David and Katerina, was born in the Bakon Hills of Hungary, in 1923. He was already drawing when at the age of ten he moved with his family from the Bakon Hill region to the considerably more cosmopolitan Budapest. Recognizing the looming threat of Hitler and the pending Nazi invasion of Hungary, in 1940, at the age of seventeen, the young artist made his way to Palestine aboard the Sakaria, an old ship heavily crowded with 2,300 other refugees. Before reaching the shores of Palestine, then under the British Mandate, the British Navy...

A contorted Rabbi looking upward is depicted in a naive, and almost child-like manner. Vibrant colors, and gestural brushstrokes fill the composition, enhancing the flatness of the figure. Harry Sternberg, artist, teacher, and political activist was born in New York City's lower east side in 1904. He was the youngest of eight children born to his mother, a hungarian immigrant, and his father, an immigrant from Russia, . His passion for art came early; by age 12 he had begun saturday art classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Sternberg continued to advance his formal art education through 1922, studying at at New York's prestigious Arts Students League alongside Raphael Soyer, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and other notables of the day. His career as a professional artist began in 1928 when he consigned a group of his early prints with the dealer Frederick Keppel in New York. In 1933 he returned to the Art Students League of New York as an instructor, where he taught etching, lithography and composition, continuing to teach there for over 34 years. During the Great Depression he was a WPA artist, and his murals are in post offices in Chicago, Chester and Sellersville, Pennsylvania. Sternberg came to national prominence as a printmaker, painter, and muralist, in the Depression era and during World War II. Sternberg was an acclaimed member of a vital generation of American artists dedicated to exposing social injustices and offering support for an egalitarian society. His interest in the plight of American workers...

Vibrant Gouache and watercolor painting by Israeli master JOSSI STERN. on paper mounted to board. 31x34.75, 23.5x27.5 without frame. Hungary, b. 1923, d. 1992 Jossi (Yossi) Stern, son of David and Katerina, was born in the Bakon Hills of Hungary, in 1923. He was already drawing when at the age of ten he moved with his family from the Bakon Hill region to the considerably more cosmopolitan Budapest. Recognizing the looming threat of Hitler and the pending Nazi invasion of Hungary, in 1940, at the age of seventeen, the young artist made his way to Palestine aboard the Sakaria, an old ship heavily crowded with 2,300 other refugees. Before reaching the shores of Palestine, then under the British Mandate, the British Navy intercepted the ship and declared Stern and all those aboard illegal immigrants. Stern was sent to a prison camp where he remained incarcerated by the British for six months. In 1943, having spent a few years doing agricultural work, Stern was encouraged by close friends who recognized his artistic talent to enroll in the prestigious Bezalel School of the Arts in Jerusalem. An outstanding student, he eventually became a highly respected teacher of Graphic Arts at Bezalel. Stern is recognized in Israel as having been one of the country's premier artists...

Doug Fraser Graphic design illustration artist. Doug was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He attended the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary where he studied graphic design and illustration. After four years at ACAD he went to New York for graduate school, attaining a masters degree, MFA, from the School of Visual Arts. Without missing a beat, Doug became an award winning illustrator, (in a cartoon, bold comic book sort of style) having executed commissioned works for an array of international clients including The New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Wirtschafts Woche (Germany), Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Motor Trend, NHL, IBM, and Levis. His technique originally involved traditional media of oils on canvas and evolved over the years to incorporate digital aspects both exclusive and combined with paint. During the early 90's, he was approached by the ACAD(Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary) to teach and accepted a part-time position. Doug has sat on several juries and spoken in numerous cities including New York and Los Angeles. His illustration work has been exhibited in the US, England, Japan and Canada. Memberships have included the prestigious Society of Illustrators(NY) for eighteen years, the advisory panel of ICON5, the American Illustrator Partnership (founding member status), CAPIC and the Graphic Artists Guild of New York. 2004 recipient of the Alberta College of Art & Design Board of Governors Alumni Award of Excellence. His style is similar to the graphic novel style of Art Spiegelman, Shepard Fairey, Ben Katchor or Robert Crumb in its graphic expressiveness After a long successful career as an illustrator, the desire to create works of a different nature and purpose began to surface. Building on the technical knowledge developed professionally as a visual communicator in the graphics world for 30 years, he began to experiment once again, without the burden of client and other constraints. This freedom enabled Doug to move beyond his past and develop a body of work which is more personal in subject. This new body of paintings strongly links artistic influences with personal observations. Influences affecting structure include graphic design, abstract and figurative art. A two dimensional quality is embraced and the construction becomes as important as the subject. The subject, which is somewhat banal in tone, is derived from his own first hand experience. Exploring subject that which is usually only seen in passing, but is now observed more closely. Intense visual study precedes a process of disassembling and then reconstruction. Throughout, there's an internal dialogue between the objective and the subjective. The experiential challenge of this process has Douglas tracing the edges of where the figurative meets abstraction. EDUCATION; Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Visual Communication Arts. School of Visual Arts, New York, New York, M.F.A. degree. ILLUSTRATION CLIENTS; Editorial: Boston Globe, Business Week, BUZZ, Esquire, Forbes, Globe & Mail, GQ, L.A. Times, Mademoiselle, Manhattan Inc, Mother Jones, Newsweek, New York Times, New York Woman,Omni, Penthouse, FORTUNE, TIME, Washington, Self, Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, Washington Post, Rolling Stone Book: David R. Godine, Houghton-Mufflin, Knopf, Macmillan, Rabbit Ears Video & Book, Simon Schuster, The Progressive, Turner Publishing (CNN), BLAB!, Telstar Comic compilation Corporate: Air Canada, Allen-Bradley [a Division of Rockwell International],Citibank, Coca-Cola, Danzas (Europe), IBM, Kingston Electronics, Kohler, Levis, Lowenbrau Beer, Concept-1 Calgary, Memorex, Oakland A's Baseball Team, National Football League, National Hockey League, Nike, Northern Telecom, Nynex NY, Pfizer, RCA, Roundtree U.K., Samsung Electronics, Sony, Suzuki Motorcycles, Tamko, USF&G [financial investment group]. Graphic Novel, Comic Book: Adhouse Press, story titles; "Electric Sheep...

This strobe-like dynamic composition with bright and bold colors reflects the energetic taste of the 7 Up brand. It lies somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Peaks' use of b...