Rafael DeSoto

Sexy Woman in a Swamp Storm - Pulp Magazine, Hispanic Artist, Mid Century

1950'S circa

Norman Mills Price depicts a handsome, nude blond boy with classical good looks. He is lying on his stomach in straw in the loft of a barn with his buttocks exposed. The artist captu...

George Hirsch - He gets his inspiration from the prototype of neo-classic painting for this groovy 1970s brothel. This is a complex figural work with m...

A gritty Burlesque Stripper with long purple gloves bumps and grinds with a hard-driving beat. American Social Realist artist Jack Levine paints this se...

Will good ultimately triumph over evil? Or is it a perpetual tug of war? WPA Artist Leonard Lopez paints a complex figural work addressing the theme of "the fight between good and e...

A young man at a crowded upper-class Haitian swimming pool attracts attention. We see him only from the back in a Magritte like pose. Transfixed expressions of some of the nubile bare-breasted bathing beauties and one man with his hands down his pants give us a clue that the mystery man is special. This is a fascinating work packed with drama and overflowing with pent-up emotion.
Bigaud's narrative is as complex as his figural composition of lookers and swimmers. Notice the sight lines of the lookers go back to front while the two swimmers go from left to right. The twenty-two figures are contained in the rectangular shape of the pool, which is pushed to the front of the picture plane. The cars of the pool partygoers are seen in the background with one witness. He is fully clothed and is most likely a chauffeur. The fully clothed female at the pool offering food is a servant. A boxy-looking radio with a pack of cigarettes and the style of the cars give glue to the date. Most Haitian art depicts average working people. The pool party departs from that tradition and shows life of the Haitian upper class. Most likely, this was painted in Petion-Ville. The higher the elevation in Port-au-Prince the more wealthy the homes. Although the artist's painting technique may be described as naive or lacking polish.
It's one of the reasons why the work radiates charm and interest. The painting is oversized with huge dimensions of 55 x 48 and will be a statement in any room. Wilson Bigaud is considered to be a Haitian master. The condition is good. Three repaired one-inch issues on the extreme center and upper right edge. Visible only on close inspection. Otherwise presents very well and is elegantly framed, ______________________________________ Haitian master Wilson Bigaud is renowned for works portraying everyday life and rites of passage—vodou rituals, fortune-tellers, weddings, cockfights, and carnivals—with voluminous figures and lucid colors. Born in Port-au-Prince, in 1946 Bigaud was among the first to attend DeWitt Peters’s Le Centre d’Art d’Haïti, where he studied with Hector Hyppolite...

Excellent Mid-century nude by famous illustrator/ artist Walter Charles Klett. The work is masterfully painted with a sound understanding of the basic academic principles guiding t...

Echoes 2 Composition with Two Female Nudes, oil on canvas, 35.5x19.5in / 90x50cm Part of WIngs of Gods, solo show. Shipped as it is, stretched, directly from the artist's studio.

"Composition with Two Male Nudes", oil and silver leaf on canvas, 35.5x23.5in / 90x60cm Part of my Male Nude series. Shipped as it is, stretched, directly from the artist's studio.

Oil Painting of a women with a sleeping Minotaur. Light neutral white painting by Cuban Artist Jesus Nordarse. 18 x 18 inches.

Janis Rozentāls was born in 1866 in Saldus, Latvia, to a family with modest means. The son of a blacksmith, Rozentāls faced economic challenges in his early life, prompting him to mo...

French Academic painter Louis-Joseph Courtat displays his mastery of composition and the female form in this entrancing oil on canvas. Entitled Baigneuses, the work was painted for and exhibited at the 1885 Paris Salon, the foremost exhibition of painters in the Western world. Large in size, it captures two nude bathers within a tranquil beach scene. While the artist's skill for landscape painting is on display, it is his command of form, light and color that bring this canvas to life. The artist specialized in paintings that glorified the nude, and his skill is clear in the luminosity of his models' skin and the classical beauty of their form and proportions. With their soft, undulating curves and flowing hair, Courtat's models reflect the two key influences on the young painter, that of the great Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as well as his teacher Alexandre Cabanel. Like these two greats who came before him, Courtat similarly follows in the artistic tradition of the female nude that is traceable to classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Born in Paris in 1847, Courtat studied at the famed École des Beaux-Arts under Cabanel. He was one of the Academic master's first students at the school, where he began to teach in 1864. Displaying considerable skill at an early age, Courtat won the Prix de Rome around 1870, and subsequently studied in Rome for a number of years. He returned to Paris in 1873 to make his debut at the Salon, where he was met with immediate success, receiving a third class medal. He received medals again in 1874 and 1875, a remarkable achievement for a painter of his age. In addition to the monumental nudes...

The Education of Achilles by the Centaur Chiron Signed and dated "A.C. Chrétien 1861" (lower right) Oil on canvas A masterpiece of French N...